Is ‘Hermione’ part of J.K. Rowling’s secret code in the Harry Potter series?

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – For a moment, my daughter and grandson looked at me as if I were Dan Brown revealing not the secrets of the Da Vinci Code, but the hidden messages in the Harry Potter code.

I had told them that author J.K. Rowling had put herself into the Harry Potter novels, that Harry’s school friend Hermione clearly was Rowling’s alter-ego.

“What makes you say so?” asked Shor, 8, a dyed-in-the-wool Harry Potter fan.

“Sometimes authors like to send messages with the names that they give to their characters,” I suggested.  “Rowling picked simple names for her boy heroes—‘Harry’ and ‘Ron’—but a complex name for her girl heroine, ‘Hermione’” I said, adding for good measure: “look how similar the words ‘heroine’ and ‘Hermione’ are.”

“Yes, so?” asked my daughter, Sandi, suspiciously.

“Well look at how Hermione is spelled,” I said. ‘Her-mi-one.’  Pronounce ‘mi’ like the musical note and it is ‘me.’  Separate the name into its component parts and it means “Her” and “me” are “one.”

“Way cool!” Shor exclaimed.  You can’t help but love that boy!

“Not so fast,” demanded Sandi, who you’ve got to love despite her tendency to distrust some of her father’s stories.  “That sounds like the same kind of faulty reasoning that convinced Beatles fans that Paul was dead.   You know, he was wearing different clothes than the other Beatles on an album cover, so clearly he was no longer like them—he was dead—and all sorts of nonsense like that.”

I grinned shamefacedly.  When it comes to Harry Potter, I’ve decided that my daughter can do no wrong.  She turned Shor onto the series, transforming a boy who had to be coaxed into reading into one who now gobbles up books, even spurning programs on the Disney Channel and the Cartoon Network to read about Harry and the gang at the Hogwarts school.

Sandi is to Harry Potter books as I am to Star Trek movies and television episodes, I bragged to myself.  Some years ago, I got Shor interested in Star Trek, winning his attention with the original series, featuring Captain Kirk played by William Shatner.  Shor’s favorite character was Mr. Spock,the Vulcan portrayed by Leonard Nimoy.  Then it was onto Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean Luc Picard.  Shor’s favorite character was Data, the android portrayed by Brent Spiner.

Now we are almost finished watching all the episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over which  Captain  Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, reigns.  Shor’s favorite character is Odo, the shapeshifter played by Rene Auberjonois, although Quark, portrayed by Armin Shimerman, runs a close second because Shor met Shimerman in San Diego during the run of The Seafarer at the San Diego Rep.

My wife Nancy already has purchased for her “boys” Star Trek: Voyager, in which Voyager will be captained by Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew).  I can’t wait to learn who Shor’s favorite character will be in that one.

I had never read the Harry Potter novels until Shor asked me to follow him into them, even as he had followed me into the Star Trek world.  His reasoning was both endearing and compelling: “It will give us more to talk about, grandpa.”

Star Trek DVD’s have the advantage of ‘pausability’’ Shor and I can stop action anywhere we want in an episode to discuss the questions being raised.   One of my favorite episodes came during the ‘Next Generation’ series when the only Klingon in Star Fleet, Worf  (Michael Dorn), was asked by a man from his world to join the Klingon cause and to forsake the Federation.   Shor and I talked about concepts of loyalty.  Here, said I, was Worf being asked to change his loyalty –in essence to switch sides from the Federation to the Klingon Empire.

Shor , a student at Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School, responded that Moses has switched his loyalties—from being an Egyptian prince to being a leader of the downtrodden Hebrews.

Besides Star Trek and Harry Potter, the stories of the Torah are among Shor’s favorite  literary reference points.

This most recent Passover, he had the opportunity to help his one-year-old cousin, Brian, search for the afikomen during a seder at our house.   Later in the week, visiting his great-grandfather Sam at the sprawling senior complex at the Ocean Hills Country Club, Shor and his brother, Sky, along with Brian, got to see what Christian kids do, participating with excitement in an Easter egg hunt.

Of course, the similarity between searching for the afikomen to later ransom and searching for an Easter egg to win a prize did not escape Shor.  Nor did he fail to note that in both Passover and Easter an egg symbolizes the renewal of life.

Whether in The Da Vinci Code, Pesach, Easter, Star Trek or Harry Potter, symbols are an important part of story telling.  I give Shor a thumb’s up for catching on.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
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