Jo said in a radio interview, "Hermione is a caricature of what I was when I was 11, a real exaggeration. I wasn’t that clever. Hermione is borderline genius at points and I hope I wasn’t that annoying because I would have deserved strangling. Sometimes she’s an incredible know-it-all."

She also stated that she and her sister had a very SPEW-ish stage. "Hermione and the rights of elves. Civil rights becomes a theme in Goblet of Fire...That was fairly autobiographical. My sister and I both, we were that kind of teenager. We were that kind of, 'I'm the only one who really feels these injustices. No one else understands the way I feel.' I think a lot of teenagers go through that...She blunders towards the very people she's trying to help. She offends them."

Jo sympathizes with Hermione, though - "My heart is entirely with her as she goes through this. She develops her political conscience. My heart is completely with her." On her condescension, she says "She thinks it's so easy. It's part of what I was saying before about the growing process, of realizing you don't have quite as much power as you think you might have and having to accept that. Then you learn that it's hard work to change things and that it doesn't happen overnight. Hermione thinks she's going to lead them to glorious rebellion in one afternoon and then finds out the reality is very different, but that was fun to write."