I’ve sometimes seen it asserted in HP fandom that Harry doesn’t care very much about Hermione, whereas Ron is often brought up as being protective of her, especially because of his actions at Malfoy Manor. Some people try to draw a contrast there: supposedly Harry wasn’t as worked up while Bellatrix was torturing Hermione, so he wasn’t as emotional about Hermione’s safety. Ron definitely deserves credit for his bold actions there and in a few other places within the books for Hermione. But even at Malfoy Manor, Harry is literally learning to drive Voldemort from his mind while coming up with a plan to save Hermione.
For Harry, protecting Hermione is almost an everyday occurrence. It’s so pervasive in the books that I think some people don’t even notice how it’s just part of Harry’s standard behavior. I truly wish fandom wouldn’t seemingly turn this into some sort of “contest” between Harry and Ron. But since people frequently do, here’s extensive proof that Harry cares too. All the time.
I’ve tried to compile examples of all sorts of protectiveness here: From the first time Harry is willing to jump on the back of a troll for a girl he barely knew to defending her verbally and physically from teachers and other students. From strategically planning to protect Hermione from harm to moments when he simply shows everyday concern for her well-being when she’s exhausted or being ostracized. From all the times he grabs onto Hermione in battle to the moment he braces himself without a wand “to punch, kick, bite, or whatever else it took” to try to shield Hermione from a giant.
Some are much more intense or meaningful than others, but I thought chronological ordering going through the books was most straightforward.
Please let me know of any other book passages you feel may have been left out here. Beicasw I haven’t included all of them.
Harry remembers Hermione and convinces Ron to go find her
They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions. As they jostled their way through a crowd of confused Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron’s arm.
‘I’ve just thought – Hermione.’
‘She doesn’t know about the troll.’
‘Oh, all right,’ he snapped. ‘But Percy’d better not see us.’
PS10: Harry acts “very brave and very stupid” in trying to save Hermione from the troll
Hermione Granger was shrinking against the wall opposite, looking as if she was about to faint. The troll was advancing on her, knocking the sinks off the walls as it went.
‘Confuse it!’ Harry said desperately to Ron, and seizing a tap he threw it as hard as he could against the wall.
The troll stopped a few feet from Hermione. It lumbered around, blinking stupidly, to see what had made the noise. Its mean little eyes saw Harry. It hesitated, then made for him instead, lifting its club as it went.
‘Oy, pea-brain!’ yelled Ron from the other side of the chamber, and he threw a metal pipe at it. The troll didn’t even seem to notice the pipe hitting its shoulder, but it heard the yell and paused again, turning its ugly snout towards Ron instead, giving Harry time to run around it.
‘Come on, run, run!’ Harry yelled at Hermione, trying to pull her towards the door, but she couldn’t move, she was still flat against the wall, her mouth open with terror.
The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll berserk. It roared again and started towards Ron, who was nearest and had no way to escape.
Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid: he took a great running jump and managed to fasten his arms around the troll’s neck from behind. The troll couldn’t feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry’s wand had still been in his hand when he’d jumped – it had gone straight up one of the troll’s nostrils.
PS16: Harry makes a plan to send Hermione out of harm’s way while he bravely goes on ahead
‘There’s only enough there for one of us,’ he said. ‘That’s hardly one swallow.’
They looked at each other.
‘Which one will get you back through the purple flames?’
Hermione pointed at a rounded bottle at the right end of the line.
‘You drink that,’ said Harry. ‘No, listen – get back and get Ron – grab brooms from the flying-key room, they’ll get you out of the trapdoor and past Fluffy – go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, we need him. I might be able to hold Snape off for a while, but I’m no match for him really.’
‘But Harry – what if You-Know-Who’s with him?’
‘Well – I was lucky once, wasn’t I?’ said Harry, pointing at his scar. ‘I might get lucky again.’
Hermione’s lip trembled and she suddenly dashed at Harry and threw her arms around him.
‘Harry – you’re a great wizard, you know.’
‘I’m not as good as you,’ said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him.
‘Positive,’ said Hermione. She took a long drink from the round bottle at the end and shuddered.
‘It’s not poison?’ said Harry anxiously.
‘No – but it’s like ice.’
‘Quick, go, before it wears off.’
‘Good luck – take care –’
Hermione turned and walked straight through the purple fire.
CoS11: Harry rescues Hermione from Millicent, fighting her off physically
‘Time to split up the dream team, I think,’ he sneered. ‘Weasley, you can partner Finnigan. Potter –’
Harry moved automatically towards Hermione.
Millicent had Hermione in a headlock and Hermione was whimpering in pain. Both their wands lay forgotten on the floor. Harry leapt forward and pulled Millicent off. It was difficult; she was a lot bigger than he was.
CoS12: Harry calmly reassures Hermione when she's upset and takes her for help (while Ron backs away)
They heard the lock slide back and Hermione emerged, sobbing, her robes pulled up over her head.
‘What’s up?’ said Ron uncertainly. ‘Have you still got Millicent’s nose or something?’
Hermione let her robes fall and Ron backed into the sink.
Her face was covered in black fur. Her eyes had gone yellow and there were long pointed ears poking through her hair.
‘It was a c-cat hair!’ she howled. ‘M-Millicent Bulstrode m-must have a cat! And the P-Potion isn’t supposed to be used for animal transformations!’
‘You’ll be teased something dreadful,’ said Myrtle happily.
‘It’s OK, Hermione,’ said Harry quickly. ‘We’ll take you up to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey never asks too many questions ...’
GoF9: Harry gets defensive about Hermione to Draco
‘Language, Weasley,’ said Malfoy his pale eyes glittering. ‘Hadn’t you better be hurrying along, now? You wouldn’t like her spotted, would you?’
He nodded at Hermione, and at the same moment, a blast like a bomb sounded from the campsite, and a flash of green light momentarily lit the trees around them.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Hermione defiantly.
‘Granger, they’re after Muggles,’ said Malfoy. ‘D’you want to be showing off your knickers in mid-air? Because if you do, hang around ... they’re moving this way, and it would give us all a laugh.’
‘Hermione’s a witch,’ Harry snarled.
GoF9: Harry physically protects both Hermione and Ron
Harry whirled around, and in a split second, he registered one fact: each of these wizards had his wand out, and every wand was pointing right at himself, Ron and Hermione. Without pausing to think, he yelled, ‘DUCK!’ He seized the other two and pulled them down onto the ground.
GoF18: Harry defends Hermione from Snape when her teeth are enlarged
[Ron] forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth – she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar. [...]
Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, ‘I see no difference.’
Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight.
It was lucky, perhaps, that both Harry and Ron started shouting at Snape at the same time; lucky their voices echoed so much in the stone corridor, for in the confused din, it was impossible for him to hear exactly what they were calling him. He got the gist, however.
GoF19: Harry can’t abide people insulting Hermione’s appearance
‘Stunningly pretty? Her?’ Pansy Parkinson had shrieked, the first time she had come face to face with Hermione after Rita’s article had appeared. ‘What was she judging against – a chipmunk?’
‘Ignore it,’ Hermione said in a dignified voice, holding her head in the air and stalking past the sniggering Slytherin girls as though she couldn’t hear them. ‘Just ignore it, Harry.’
But Harry couldn’t ignore it.
OotP15: Harry can’t help sticking up for Hermione against Umbridge, despite being warned; note that he knows by doing so, he’s risking more detention that will involve him carving words into his own hand
‘That is enough,’ said Professor Umbridge. She walked back to the front of the class and stood before them, all the jauntiness she had shown at the beginning of the lesson gone. ‘Miss Granger, I am going to take five points from Gryffindor house.’
There was an outbreak of muttering at this.
‘What for?’ said Harry angrily.
‘Don’t you get involved!’ Hermione whispered urgently to him.
‘For disrupting my class with pointless interruptions,’ said Professor Umbridge smoothly.
‘Yeah, Quirrell was a great teacher,’ said Harry loudly, ‘there was just that minor drawback of him having Lord Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head.’
This pronouncement was followed by one of the loudest silences Harry had ever heard. Then –
‘I think another week’s detentions would do you some good, Mr Potter,’ said Umbridge sleekly.
OotP20: Harry acts to prevent Hermione from being detected
‘There are three sets of footprints in the snow leading from the castle doors to your cabin,’ said Umbridge sleekly.
Hermione gasped; Harry clapped a hand over her mouth. Luckily, Fang was sniffing loudly around the hem of Professor Umbridge’s robes and she did not appear to have heard.
OotP28: Harry defends Hermione’s actions regarding the DA to Cho
‘That was a really horrible trick of Hermione Granger’s,’ said Cho fiercely. ‘She should have told us she’d jinxed that list –’
‘I think it was a brilliant idea,’ said Harry coldly. Cho flushed and her eyes grew brighter.
‘Oh yes, I forgot – of course, if it was darling Hermione’s idea –’
OotP30: Harry physically pulls Hermione out of the way of Grawp and protects her
Grawp’s hand had shot out of nowhere towards Hermione; Harry seized her and pulled her backwards behind the tree, so that Grawp’s fist scraped the trunk but closed on thin air.
‘BAD BOY, GRAWPY!’ they heard Hagrid yelling, as Hermione clung to Harry behind the tree, shaking and whimpering. ‘VERY BAD BOY! YEH DON’ GRAB – OUCH!’
OotP33: Harry physically protects Hermione from the centaurs
Harry grabbed Hermione and pulled her to the ground; face down on the Forest floor, he knew a moment of terror as hooves thundered around him, but the centaurs leapt over and around them, bellowing and screaming with rage.
OotP35: Harry grabs onto Hermione and tries to protect her at the DoM
‘RUN!’ Harry yelled, as the shelves swayed precariously and more glass spheres began to fall from above. He seized a handful of Hermione’s robes and dragged her forwards, holding one arm over his head as chunks of shelf and shards of glass thundered down upon them.
OotP35: Harry desperately holds on to Hermione when she’s injured in the DoM and panics at her injury
A whine of panic inside his head was preventing him thinking properly: he had one hand on Hermione’s shoulder, which was still warm, yet did not dare look at her properly. Don’t let her be dead, don’t let her be dead, it’s my fault if she’s dead ...
HBP4: Harry instinctively defends Hermione’s Muggle-born status (when she wasn’t even the topic of conversation)
‘Your mother was Muggle-born, of course. Couldn’t believe it when I found out. Thought she must have been pure-blood, she was so good.’
‘One of my best friends is Muggle-born,’ said Harry, ‘and she’s the best in our year.’
‘Funny how that sometimes happens, isn’t it?’ said Slughorn.
‘Not really,’ said Harry coldly.
HBP14: Harry catches a glimpse of Hermione (as Ron is snogging Lavender for the first time) and goes after her when she’s upset
Harry turned away from Ron, who did not look like surfacing soon, just in time to see the portrait hole closing. With a sinking feeling he thought he saw a mane of bushy brown hair whipping out of sight.
He darted forwards, sidestepped Romilda Vane again, and pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady. The corridor outside seemed to be deserted.
He found her in the first unlocked classroom he tried. She was sitting on the teacher’s desk, alone except for a small ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she had clearly just conjured out of midair. Harry could not help admiring her spellwork at a time like this.
HBP15: Unlike in PoA when Ron and Hermione are fighting, in HBP Harry gets away from Ron while Ron is “busy” to regularly spend time with Hermione (this one may not be explicitly “protective,” but shows how Harry now is more actively attentive to Hermione when she’s alone than he was in the early books)
Hermione’s timetable was so full that Harry could only talk to her properly in the evenings, when Ron was in any case so tightly wrapped around Lavender that he did not notice what Harry was doing. Hermione refused to sit in the common room while Ron was there, so Harry generally joined her in the library, which meant that their conversations were held in whispers.
HBP15: Harry runs after Hermione and tries to help when she’s crying after Ron does a cruel impression of her in class
Hermione laughed unkindly at Ron’s disastrous first attempt, during which he somehow managed to give himself a spectacular handlebar moustache; Ron retaliated by doing a cruel but accurate impression of Hermione jumping up and down in her seat every time Professor McGonagall asked a question, which Lavender and Parvati found deeply amusing and which reduced Hermione to the verge of tears again. She raced out of the classroom on the bell, leaving half her things behind; Harry, deciding that her need was greater than Ron’s, scooped up her remaining possessions and followed her.
HBP15: Harry, again more assertively than in PoA, actively calls out Ron for being unkind to Hermione
A long way along the table, Hermione was sitting alone, playing with her stew. Harry noticed Ron looking at her furtively.
‘You could say sorry,’ suggested Harry bluntly.
‘What, and get attacked by another flock of canaries?’ muttered Ron.
‘What did you have to imitate her for?’
‘She laughed at my moustache!’
‘So did I, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’
DH10: Harry can’t abide Kreacher’s language about Hermione
‘Master,’ croaked Kreacher in his bullfrog’s voice, and he bowed low, muttering to his knees, ‘back in my mistress’s old house with the blood traitor Weasley and the Mudblood –’
‘I forbid you to call anyone “blood traitor” or “Mudblood”,’ growled Harry.
‘The Mudblood touched Kreacher, he will not allow it, what would his mistress say?’
‘I told you not to call her “Mudblood”!’ snarled Harry, but the elf was already punishing himself: he fell to the ground and banged his forehead on the floor.
DH13: Harry grabs onto Hermione in a dangerous situation at the Ministry
Harry saw Yaxley’s head turn, saw an inkling of the truth dawn in that brutish face.
‘Come on!’ Harry shouted at Hermione; he seized her hand and they jumped into the fireplace together as Yaxley’s curse sailed over Harry’s head.
DH13: Again Yaxley appears, and Harry again instinctively reaches for Hermione’s hand
There was a noise in the cubicle behind them; Harry looked around; Yaxley had just appeared.
‘LET’S GO!’ Harry yelled. He seized Hermione by the hand and Ron by the arm and turned on the spot.
DH17: Harry and Hermione hold on to each other in a frightening situation
They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott.
‘There’s someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes.’
They stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard. Harry could not see anything.
Harry reassures Hermione when she (once again) grabs hold of him
Hermione jumped and clutched Harry’s arm.
‘It’s OK,’ said Harry reassuringly, and he led the way into the sitting room.
DH17: When Nagini moves to attack Hermione at Bathilda’s, Harry basically gives up fighting and protecting himself, instead focusing solely on pulling Hermione away from danger as best as he can
‘He’s coming! Hermione, he’s coming!’
As [Harry] yelled, the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos: it smashed shelves from the wall and splintered china flew everywhere as Harry jumped over the bed and seized the dark shape he knew to be Hermione –
She shrieked with pain as he pulled her back across the bed: the snake reared again, but Harry knew that worse than the snake was coming, was perhaps already at the gate, his head was going to split open with the pain from his scar –
The snake lunged as he took a running leap, dragging Hermione with him; as it struck, Hermione screamed, ‘Confringo!’ and her spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Harry felt the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek as, pulling Hermione with him, he leapt from bed to broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into nothingness, her scream reverberating through the night as they twisted in mid-air ...
DH23: At Malfoy Manor, Harry plots an escape and finally masters the ability of blocking out Voldemort’s mind for the first time (using what is later referenced as the power of “love” in the next chapter) in order to save Hermione; there’s much more to this whole passage—I’d encourage people to read the whole chapter to see how Harry is constantly pushing Voldemort out of his mind to focus on the rescue of Hermione and getting them all out of there
Hermione was screaming again: the sound went through Harry like physical pain. Barely conscious of the fierce prickling of his scar, he, too, started to run around the cellar, feeling the walls for he hardly knew what, knowing in his heart that it was useless.
As Harry spoke, his scar burned worse than ever, and for a few seconds he looked down, not upon the wandmaker, but on another man who was just as old, just as thin, but laughing scornfully.
‘Kill me, then, Voldemort, I welcome death! But my death will not bring you what you seek ... there is so much you do not understand ...’
He felt Voldemort’s fury, but as Hermione screamed again he shut it out, returning to the cellar and the horror of his own present.
DH31: Harry grabs onto Hermione during the BoH
And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three red-headed men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood.
DH32: Harry once again instinctively grabs onto Hermione during the BoH (leaving Ron "bringing up the rear")
‘RUN!’ Harry roared; the night was full of hideous yells and blows as the giants wrestled, and he seized Hermione’s hand and tore down the steps into the grounds, Ron bringing up the rear.
additional moment from DH31 during the BoH, where Harry's "fury" at Hermione being attacked and his need to defend her wipes everything else from his thoughts:
A jet of scarlet light shot past Harry by inches: Hermione had run round the corner behind him and sent a Stunning Spell straight at Crabbe’s head. It only missed because Malfoy pulled him out of the way.
‘It’s that Mudblood! Avada Kedavra!’
Harry saw Hermione dive aside and his fury that Crabbe had aimed to kill wiped all else from his mind. He shot a Stunning Spell at Crabbe, who lurched out of the way, knocking Malfoy’s wand out of his hand; it rolled out of sight beneath a mountain of broken furniture and boxes.
That’s the end of the post. Feel free to comment any of your favourite protective Harry moments!!!
