Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter Films

Hermione Granger is one of the three central friends of the Harry Potter films, a Hogwarts student who joins Harry and Ron Weasley in their first year and stays with them through the whole war against Voldemort. Emma Watson plays her in all eight main films, and the credits list the role simply as Hermione Granger. The character comes from J.K. Rowling's novels, which the films adapt.

Watson is billed third in the first six films and second in the last two, behind Daniel Radcliffe each time. That billing matches the way the films use her: Hermione is part of the leading trio, not a supporting extra, and the story of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley rarely moves without her.

She first appears in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), directed by Chris Columbus, the year Harry is sorted into Gryffindor and starts making friends. She is last seen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011), directed by David Yates, at King's Cross station nineteen years after the war. For the full list of faces around her, see the harry potter cast and the wider list of harry potter characters.

The HBO television adaptation is a separate production from these films, with a first season reported for December 25, 2026, according to TODAY. It is covered on the harry potter tv series page. In the films, Emma Watson is the only actress to have played Hermione.

Hermione moves from a new classmate in 2001 to one of the three people hunting Voldemort's Horcruxes by 2011. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she becomes friends with Harry and Ron, and the three learn that a three-headed dog guards a trapdoor. When they go after the Stone themselves, they get past a series of traps, including the giant living chess game, and Ron and Hermione are left behind along the way while Harry continues alone. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), also directed by Columbus, she joins the Polyjuice Potion plan to question Draco Malfoy. She is then petrified, and she is out of the action until the students are cured near the end.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), directed by Alfonso Cuarón, her Time-Turner becomes the key to the climax. She follows Harry into the tunnel under the Whomping Willow after a large black dog pulls Ron in, and Dumbledore then hints that she and Harry can use the Time-Turner to change the night. They go back, free Buckbeak and help Sirius Black escape.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), directed by Mike Newell, she is part of the friendship that is strained by the Yule Ball and by Ron's jealousy. By the end she stands with Harry and Ron, knowing the world will not be the same. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), directed by David Yates, she, Harry and Ron form Dumbledore's Army after Dolores Umbridge bans real defensive magic.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Ron's short relationship with Lavender Brown leaves her hurt, and at the end she and Ron promise to go with Harry on the hunt for Horcruxes. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010) puts her on the run with Harry and Ron, and at Malfoy Manor Bellatrix tortures her before Dobby frees the prisoners. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011), she breaks into Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts, escapes on the dragon, and later destroys Helga Hufflepuff's cup with Ron using a Basilisk fang.

Hermione's closest relationships are with Harry and Ron, the two friends she meets in the first film and keeps through the last. The films build a friendship rather than a romance between her and Harry. His romance in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is with Ginny Weasley, and Hermione stays beside him as a loyal ally from the Order of the Phoenix hearing period to the flight from the wedding.

Her story with Ron is more uneven. Ron and Hermione are both left behind on the way to the Stone in the first film. In the sixth film, his relationship with Lavender Brown hurts her, and in the seventh the influence of the locket makes him jealous, so he quarrels with Harry and leaves. He returns, saves Harry from the frozen pond and destroys the locket with the Sword of Gryffindor. In the last film, the two destroy the cup together, and in the epilogue they stand together at King's Cross with Harry.

Her enemies are just as clear. Draco Malfoy is the student she and her friends question under Polyjuice Potion in the second film, and Bellatrix Lestrange is the Death Eater who tortures her at Malfoy Manor. Albus Dumbledore trusts her and her friends, and in the seventh film Scrimgeour delivers the items he left to Harry, Ron and Hermione. In the third film, he is also the one who hints she can use the Time-Turner to change the night.

Hermione lives. She is one of the few members of the leading trio whose story ends with no loss to herself, and she is still standing in the series' final shot. She comes close to death earlier, since Bellatrix Lestrange tortures her at Malfoy Manor in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, and Dobby's rescue is what gets her out, at the cost of his own life.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, her last contributions to the war are practical ones. She goes with Harry and Ron into Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts, leaves on the back of the vault's dragon, and later helps Ron destroy Helga Hufflepuff's cup with a Basilisk fang, which takes one Horcrux out of Voldemort's hands before the final battle. The film does not show her dying, and none of the eight films does.

The last scene jumps forward nineteen years to King's Cross station. Hermione is there beside Ron and Harry as their children head for the Hogwarts Express, with Ginny and Draco Malfoy also on the platform. It is a quiet close for a character who spent most of the saga running from danger, and it leaves her settled in the wizarding world she first entered as an eleven year old newcomer.

In my opinion, Hermione's strongest scenes are the ones where the plot depends on something only she has, rather than on a speech. The clearest case is the Time-Turner in Prisoner of Azkaban. Cuarón builds the last act as a loop in which Harry and Hermione fix the night they have just lived through, and she is the person who makes the second pass possible, freeing Buckbeak and helping Sirius Black get away. It could be argued that this is the best use of any single character in the first four films.

The second pick is Dumbledore's Army in Order of the Phoenix. Umbridge bans real defensive magic, and Hermione, with Harry and Ron, answers by starting a secret group that teaches the other students to defend themselves. Yates uses it to show the trio changing from schoolchildren who solve a mystery into people who organize others.

The third is the Malfoy Manor sequence in Deathly Hallows Part 1. It is the darkest scene she has, because Bellatrix tortures her after Snatchers take the trio to the manor, and Dobby's rescue turns it into a loss as well as an escape. Perhaps the most telling contrast comes in Part 2, when she and Ron break into Gringotts, ride out on the vault's dragon and later destroy the cup with a Basilisk fang. Set against her helplessness at Malfoy Manor, that is the series paying off her arc. Her petrification in Chamber of Secrets is the quietest of her moments, but it matters, because it removes her from the story for most of the film and shows how much the trio relies on her.