Remember when the Harry Potter movies were joyful escapism about child witches and wizards at magical school? By the time the two-part adaptation of the Deathly Hallows came around, the franchise had taken a turn for the bleak and delivered some seriously rough scenes. One of those featured a devastating moment involving Hermione Granger.
Hermione plays a big part in the Harry Potter series, standing as one of the best Harry Potter characters and helping her friends in the toughest moments throughout the Harry Potter movies in order. But in Deathly Hallows Part 1, we see her return to her childhood home to make a crushing decision ahead of the hunt for the Horcruxes that could take down Voldemort.
Hermione walks silently into her parents’ living room and casts a Memory Charm on them. In order to keep them safe from the Death Eaters, Hermione has decided to make them forget she ever existed. We watch as Hermione fades out of all of the family photographs, Back to the Future style.
It’s a quietly horrifying moment, for sure. The younger members of the Harry Potter cast got a lot of flak for their acting in the early movies, but there’s no denying Emma Watson here. She takes a less is more approach to her performance in the scene, but we certainly feel the weight of her heart-breaking choice.
In the movies, there’s no resolution to this moment. We never see Hermione reconnect with her parents and, for all we know as moviegoers, they never had a chance to remember that they ever had a daughter. There was, in fact, a deleted scene for Deathly Hallows Part 1 in which a Death Eater burst into their home, only to find they had relocated to Australia.
In a 2007 web chat (via The Leaky Cauldron), the Harry Potter author confirmed that there was indeed a happy reunion for the Granger clan. When asked whether Hermione was able to undo the memory damage, she said: “Yes, she brought them home straight away.”
So we can rest easy in that respect. Even though there understandably wasn’t room for this in one of the best movies from the Potter saga, we have official confirmation that the family got back together when the heroes brought peace to the Wizarding World.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, we’ll point out that you might recognize the actor playing Hermione’s mom. Yep, that’s none other than Michelle Fairley, aka Catelyn Stark in the Game of Thrones cast. If you’re a Thrones fan, look ahead to House of the Dragon season 2 with us.
We’ve got loads more Harry Potter fun for you, as we explain why the most terrifying Harry Potter monster didn’t make the movies and reveal why we still can’t forgive the Harry Potter finale for this book change. Elsewhere, learn more about Luna Lovegood, Severus Snape, and Hagrid.
The creator of the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling, has made a number of transphobic remarks on social media in recent years. If you’d like to learn more about transgender equality or lend your support, here are two charities we encourage you to visit: the National Center for Transgender Equality in the US and Mermaids in the UK.