It's a dumb joke, I know. Cut me some slack, I gotta lighten the mood on this one.

Before I jump back in, I want to say that if you, my dear and precious reader, think it might be difficult for you to set aside a mistrust of people who disagree with your views, and feel compelled to defame and/or insult them, I'm going to suggest you just skip this section. If you're sticking around, but often feel a knee-jerk reaction to pre-judge and presuppose racism or bigotry, I'd ask that you first hear me out.

And please don't conflate my views on canon with a misguided belief that Hermione should ONLY be played by a white person. The books are OS-Canon (Original Source). Her race doesn't change in the books, and I plan to prove that the color of her skin is not as ambiguous as it is now claimed to be. In other categories of canon (JKR or WW) however, where the rules are a little more flexible and differing interpretations is part of the fun, the character of Hermione Granger can be (and maybe should be) racially fluid.

Where we left off: the casting of the famously talented, dark-skinned Noma Dumezweni as Hermione had sparked fervent discussion and even downright hatred on both sides of the fanbase, to which Rowling claimed a side and responded that Hermione's skin was never specified as white and that any adverse thinking was a result of idiotic racism, even from her most ardent fans.

As was previously mentioned, Hermione was never depicted with "frizzy" hair in the Harry Potter books, contrary to JKR's false declaration of canonical proof. The earliest date I could find on record where Hermione was described with "frizzy" hair, which could conceivably indicate a race other than caucasian, was from an article in late 2010.

After 2010, "frizzy hair" only occasionally showed up in the fanon lexicon. In the seven years since, it has become synonymous with the characterization of Hermione. The actual synonyms of Hermione's "bushy" hair (as described in OS-Canon) are: shaggy, curly, big, straggly, wiry, bristly, and scraggly. Whereas the common synonyms of "frizzy" include words like: tousled, nappy, stubbly, crisp, afro, permed, and kinked. While there is some crossover between the two, frizzy is most certainly not a synonym of bushy.

I know this may seem like an exhausting level of nitpicking (I get you), but it goes to the outward understanding of Hermione as an established canon character. And that a significant degree of the argument in favor of a POC (Person Of Color) Hermione is due, at least in some part, to this justifiable misconception of her being described in the books as having "frizzy" hair, which is false.

The interesting correlation with frizzy-haired Hermione that can be made during this period of time was the rising fad of something called racebending.

Since all of you are here because of fanfiction, I probably don't have to cue you in on this, but if you are confused... racebending is a storytelling concept popularized in fanfic that takes white or non-racial/unspecified characters and makes them people of color instead. In the public sphere, this is often done as a balance to underrepresentation (2011 - comic book Spiderman becomes half black, half Latino). In fanon, it's just another way for writers to put their personal twist on established content. Which is, of course, awesome. The opposite would be whitewashing, when white people are placed in roles that are typically assigned to a different ethnicity. This is understandably less awesome.

In the past five years, the idea of black Hermione was as prevalent in fanfic circles as black-haired Hermione, the bo$$ a$$ Slytherin. But where did the concept originate? The earliest recorded example I could find was an article from the fall of 2010 entitled: Fear of a Black Hermione.

This subtle suggestion was taken further in the years to come in highly-shared articles like "Black Hermione And 6 Other Racebent Characters Who Challenge Your Racial Assumptions" and "22 Casts That Would Be Better With People Of Color". But none of these could represent the rising craze of racebending familiar characters better than the fan art that spread like Fiendfyre on sites like Deviantart and Tumblr. The most compelling images were the ones showcasing the likes of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger as black, Latino, or mixed race.

For maybe the first time since they cracked open the books, Potterheads of Color were feeling a warm sense of representation, even if that representation happened to never be explicitly stated. We shared the images and used them as profile pictures. We wrote endless reams of fanfiction. And it was in this newly inclusive environment that an article was written for Buzzfeed by a woman who was both uniquely tied to the heart of the franchise and to the voice of the social justice it championed so well.

An article that made a case for black Hermione in a very emotional and convincing way.

An article that was shared on Twitter and *favorited* by J.K. Rowling.