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seldearRon/Hermione - Harry Potter
I wasn't actually all that satisfied with the Ron/Hermione essay on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ship_manifesto. It didn't focus as much on the evidence as it did on the 'feelgoodness' of it. Granted, at ship_manifesto there are some pairings where you have to go on the 'feelgoodness' of it rather than any concrete canon interaction, but I personally don't consider Ron and Hermione fall into this category.
This is not an essay full of reasons why Ron and Hermione would or wouldn't work.
This is an essay about why I see the Ron/Hermione pairings as well as why I like it.
I came late to Ron/Hermione - mostly because I was enjoying the books as plot/intrigue and didn't see anything more than friendship between any of the Trio (or anyone else) until the fourth book: 'Goblet of Fire'. Harry had a marginal interest in Cho Chang (he thought she was pretty during the third year Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor), but other than that and Ginny Weasley's crush on Harry, there isn't much consideration of romance. Friendship, yes; romance, no.
I didn't pay much attention to the hints and tips that were apparently provided in the first three books. My interest was mostly on the plotline and the interaction between the trio as a trio - not on any particular pairing.
However, when JKR planted the Yule Ball bang smack in the middle of 'Goblet of Fire', I sat up and took notice.
Every Ron/Hermione shipper knows the Yule Ball scenes. They're generally considered the hinge point of the Ron/Hermione relationship. In true style of the romantic literary genre, it is Ron's jealousy of Krum that illuminates the way Ron feels about Hermione, which leads to a revelation about the way Hermione feels about Ron - even if the words are never actually said.
That's not to say that there are hearts, flowers, hot sex, and declarations of undying love. This is a children's story, not a Mills and Boon - no matter how much some people may wish otherwise.
The first of the two key scenes of the Yule Ball are when Hermione sits down with Ron and Harry during the Ball, after they've discovered that she's Viktor Krum's partner - and that Viktor Krum pursued her to gain her as his partner. Ron, who has previously revered Krum, is now furious with the famous Quidditch player and with Hermione. The reason he gives is that she's 'fraternising with the enemy' - an accusation that Hermione ferociously denies and the two argue about it, while Harry's being quietly miserable about Cho and Cedric.
In this scene, Ron first reveals his emotional cards. At the Yule Ball, and frequently thereafter, he is jealous of Krum's influence on Hermione and with typical adolescent male clumsiness, shows it in his failure to dissemble.
So Ron likes Hermione. JKR stuck that message up in neon lights.
The second key scene from 'Goblet of Fire' is at the end of the Yule Ball, after everyone's packed up and gone to bed, and Cedric pauses in his romantic endeavours with Cho and gives Harry some well-meaning advice regarding the next task. Harry resents it like the jealous adolescent he is, and enters the Gryffindor Common Room to find his friends in the middle of an argument - and not just any argument, but an argument about whom they took to the Yule Ball.
The single phrase that gives us the insight into Hermione's feelings for Ron Weasley - at least at the time of the Yule Ball - is her instruction: "Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!" And up the stairs she storms, leaving Ron speechless in her wake.
It strikes me as singularly interesting that she lays down this gauntlet before Ron; not Harry, not Krum, not Neville, Draco, or any other boy of her acquaintance, but Ronald Weasley. And it's not just any coy comment but a very direct invitation: Ask me before someone else does!
As of the Yule Ball in 'Goblet of Fire', Hermione likes Ron. Q.E.D.
The tricky question - and the one that is most fiercely argued in the HP ship wars - is whether this affection/crush/preference continues on to the end of the book and into 'Order of the Phoenix'. Adolescents are prone to crushes that come and go, and first love is not always last love. It's all in the perspective.
I think that the interest continues on both sides, albeit more veiled by Hermione. She's a very self-conscious young lady and having revealed her interest in Ron out of anger and pique, she might very well seek to appear indifferent afterwards - especially since Ron still doesn't take any particular romantic or emotional interest in her.
Her jealousy of Fleur Delacour - especially after the second task when Fleur is so grateful for Harry's rescue of her sister Gabrielle that she kisses not only Harry but also Ron - is one indicator. The kiss on Ron's cheek before the first Quidditch game in 'Order of the Phoenix' is another. Whether or not she kisses Harry after is a matter for debate: if she does, Harry certainly doesn't think anything of it.
Ron's continued jealousy of Krum - only slightly overcome at the end of 'Goblet of Fire' - shows in his pointed queries of Hermione's correspondance with the Bulgarian boy in 'Order of the Phoenix'. It can also be seen in the way he jumps on Hermione's reassurance to Harry that he's not a bad kisser - after Harry's first kiss with Cho involves tears.
Are these definitive indicators of affection? By no means. But they are interpretative pointers towards something between Ron and Hermione.
Would such a relationship work?
The first argument against Ron/Hermione goes that Hermione doesn't like Ron that way. I think I've answered that question sufficiently to be able to say that, yes, at one stage, she does like Ron 'that way' and that the continuance of such affection is interpretative.
The second argument is that a relationship between them would never work.
In many things, they're complete opposites. Ron's laid-back, Hermione's uptight. She's perfectionist, he's sloppy. She's very clever, his marks are average. He's pureblood, she's muggleborn. She's an only child, he's one of seven. And they argue. Boy, do they ever argue!
Does it really matter that they're opposites and argue a lot? I don't believe that 'love conquers all'. However, I do believe that disparate people and personalities can mesh together very well in partnership and marriage - in my personal experience of the world, I've seen marriages work out between couples whom everyone said would never go the distance, and I've seen marriages fail where the couple seemed 'destined' for each other.
In one thing, at least, they're quite united and very much the same: they're both fiercely loyal to Harry, and to each other, as friends - true Gryffindors. Beyond that, I don't find it matters if they're personality opposites. In the core things, they're a lot alike and, with commitment, those similarities would easily carry the day.
For fans of the Ron/Hermione ship, we'll never really see the development of their relationship. The story is told through Harry's eyes and with a focus on Harry's cumulative defeats of Voldemort, not on the relationship between Ron and Hermione. So the 'insider track' of what happens between Ron and Hermione is unlikely to be shown.
Does that mean the Ron/Hermione doesn't exist? Well, only in the way that anything out of sight doesn't exist because it's not in sight. There may very well be a taxi just around the corner, there may not: you won't know until you get to the corner, and if you don't make it to the corner, you'll never know.
At any rate, whatever Rowling comes out with in 'Half-Blood Prince', I fully hope that Ron and Hermione will continue to be friends and protagonists together, stubborn and passionate in their defence of and commitment to Harry.
And I'll be a Ron/Hermione shipper to my dying day.
--
Harry/Luna - Harry Potter
This is a short 'ship manifesto. More of a confession, really.
Harry/Luna is considered pure lunacy among most mainstream HP 'shippers. She's only appeared in one book, they haven't had more than a handful of scenes together, and it's far too early to be saying that there is any romantic interest between them.
Nevertheless, Harry/Luna is my Harry-inclusive OTP.
The chiefest reason I see the possibilities in Harry and Luna is because of the single scene between them, right at the end of 'Order of the Phoenix' when Harry skips the final dinner and wanders through the halls of Hogwarts. He comes upon Luna tacking up posters about her missing stuff and they talk.
It's not a long conversation, nor a particularly deep one. But this is the closest that Harry comes to baring his soul of the guilt and anger he feels over Sirius' death and his part in the prophecy. He doesn't speak to his best friend Ron, or Hermione - who's given emotional advice to him more than once. He doesn't speak to Ginny as someone who understands about Voldemort, or to Neville who might have been the prophecy's focus. He doesn't say a thing to Dumbledore, Remus, McGonagall, or the Weasleys.
But Luna does nothing more than asks a few vague questions about Sirius (whom she still calls Stubby Boardman) and offers up some of her own experiences, and Harry's kicked out of his own misery and given a new perspective.
Harry's different. Everyone knows that. He's different because of what he's done, and what's been done to him, and Luna understands that difference. What Harry has recently experienced in his life - ostracism, difference, mockery, disbelief - is what Luna has also experienced. The reasons for their varying experiences are vastly different, but give them a commonality that Harry doesn't really find in his other friendships.
One theme that runs through the books is Harry's desire to belong somewhere. He is the Odysseus of the wizarding world, trying to reach his 'home' but unable to find it in Privet Drive, Hogwarts, the Burrow, or Grimmauld Place. The closest he comes to it is in his hope of living with his godfather, Sirius - a hope that is cruelly thwarted at the end of 'Prisoner of Azkaban'. As of the end of 'Order of the Phoenix', Sirius is dead and that dream is shattered.
I can see Harry finding that sense of 'home' - of acceptance and understanding and belonging without crowding - with Luna, as I can't see him finding it among the cacophony of the Weasleys, or the pristine orderliness implied in the lives of the Grangers as represented by Hermione. I can also see Harry coming to accept that he'll never be 'ordinary' or 'normal' - not with his history, not with his past, and certainly not with the prophecy that has dictated his life from before his birth. Luna has accepted her difference, and I like the idea of her showing Harry that 'different' is not as bad as it might seem given his background with the Dursleys.
We don't get a clear idea of Luna's personality from the inside: as I mentioned in the Ron/Hermione essay, the books are told from Harry's POV. But I think that Harry would provide the practical grounding for Luna, even as she provided the whimsical side of the partnership and brought a new perspective to life. Her oddities might continue to be odd to Harry, but he'd enjoy the peculiarity, even as she'd appreciate the loyalty he had towards her in spite of her bizarre theories and ways.
My sister, B2, believes that the injuries in the infirmary scene in 'Order of the Phoenix' give a hint as to the way JKR has set up the pairings for the series. Both Ron and Hermione are badly injured and kept in the infirmary; Neville and Ginny are injured but otherwise okay; and Harry and Luna are only lightly injured. The theory is a little far-fetched in my opinion, but it matches the way I see personalities meshing - at least among the 'hextet' (Harry, Ron, Hermione; Neville, Ginny, and Luna).
It's nothing more than a projection at this stage, but even if JKR scuttles it, I have to say, I like the possibilities inherent in Harry/Luna. Sure, they'd never be 'normal', but then again, these are two people who've never been normal.
--
Next up: Batman/Wonder Woman - Justice League
I wasn't actually all that satisfied with the Ron/Hermione essay on
ship_manifesto. It didn't focus as much on the evidence as it did on the 'feelgoodness' of it. Granted, at ship_manifesto there are some pairings where you have to go on the 'feelgoodness' of it rather than any concrete canon interaction, but I personally don't consider Ron and Hermione fall into this category.This is not an essay full of reasons why Ron and Hermione would or wouldn't work.
This is an essay about why I see the Ron/Hermione pairings as well as why I like it.
I came late to Ron/Hermione - mostly because I was enjoying the books as plot/intrigue and didn't see anything more than friendship between any of the Trio (or anyone else) until the fourth book: 'Goblet of Fire'. Harry had a marginal interest in Cho Chang (he thought she was pretty during the third year Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor), but other than that and Ginny Weasley's crush on Harry, there isn't much consideration of romance. Friendship, yes; romance, no.
I didn't pay much attention to the hints and tips that were apparently provided in the first three books. My interest was mostly on the plotline and the interaction between the trio as a trio - not on any particular pairing.
However, when JKR planted the Yule Ball bang smack in the middle of 'Goblet of Fire', I sat up and took notice.
Every Ron/Hermione shipper knows the Yule Ball scenes. They're generally considered the hinge point of the Ron/Hermione relationship. In true style of the romantic literary genre, it is Ron's jealousy of Krum that illuminates the way Ron feels about Hermione, which leads to a revelation about the way Hermione feels about Ron - even if the words are never actually said.
That's not to say that there are hearts, flowers, hot sex, and declarations of undying love. This is a children's story, not a Mills and Boon - no matter how much some people may wish otherwise.
The first of the two key scenes of the Yule Ball are when Hermione sits down with Ron and Harry during the Ball, after they've discovered that she's Viktor Krum's partner - and that Viktor Krum pursued her to gain her as his partner. Ron, who has previously revered Krum, is now furious with the famous Quidditch player and with Hermione. The reason he gives is that she's 'fraternising with the enemy' - an accusation that Hermione ferociously denies and the two argue about it, while Harry's being quietly miserable about Cho and Cedric.
In this scene, Ron first reveals his emotional cards. At the Yule Ball, and frequently thereafter, he is jealous of Krum's influence on Hermione and with typical adolescent male clumsiness, shows it in his failure to dissemble.
So Ron likes Hermione. JKR stuck that message up in neon lights.
The second key scene from 'Goblet of Fire' is at the end of the Yule Ball, after everyone's packed up and gone to bed, and Cedric pauses in his romantic endeavours with Cho and gives Harry some well-meaning advice regarding the next task. Harry resents it like the jealous adolescent he is, and enters the Gryffindor Common Room to find his friends in the middle of an argument - and not just any argument, but an argument about whom they took to the Yule Ball.
The single phrase that gives us the insight into Hermione's feelings for Ron Weasley - at least at the time of the Yule Ball - is her instruction: "Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!" And up the stairs she storms, leaving Ron speechless in her wake.
It strikes me as singularly interesting that she lays down this gauntlet before Ron; not Harry, not Krum, not Neville, Draco, or any other boy of her acquaintance, but Ronald Weasley. And it's not just any coy comment but a very direct invitation: Ask me before someone else does!
As of the Yule Ball in 'Goblet of Fire', Hermione likes Ron. Q.E.D.
The tricky question - and the one that is most fiercely argued in the HP ship wars - is whether this affection/crush/preference continues on to the end of the book and into 'Order of the Phoenix'. Adolescents are prone to crushes that come and go, and first love is not always last love. It's all in the perspective.
I think that the interest continues on both sides, albeit more veiled by Hermione. She's a very self-conscious young lady and having revealed her interest in Ron out of anger and pique, she might very well seek to appear indifferent afterwards - especially since Ron still doesn't take any particular romantic or emotional interest in her.
Her jealousy of Fleur Delacour - especially after the second task when Fleur is so grateful for Harry's rescue of her sister Gabrielle that she kisses not only Harry but also Ron - is one indicator. The kiss on Ron's cheek before the first Quidditch game in 'Order of the Phoenix' is another. Whether or not she kisses Harry after is a matter for debate: if she does, Harry certainly doesn't think anything of it.
Ron's continued jealousy of Krum - only slightly overcome at the end of 'Goblet of Fire' - shows in his pointed queries of Hermione's correspondance with the Bulgarian boy in 'Order of the Phoenix'. It can also be seen in the way he jumps on Hermione's reassurance to Harry that he's not a bad kisser - after Harry's first kiss with Cho involves tears.
Are these definitive indicators of affection? By no means. But they are interpretative pointers towards something between Ron and Hermione.
Would such a relationship work?
The first argument against Ron/Hermione goes that Hermione doesn't like Ron that way. I think I've answered that question sufficiently to be able to say that, yes, at one stage, she does like Ron 'that way' and that the continuance of such affection is interpretative.
The second argument is that a relationship between them would never work.
In many things, they're complete opposites. Ron's laid-back, Hermione's uptight. She's perfectionist, he's sloppy. She's very clever, his marks are average. He's pureblood, she's muggleborn. She's an only child, he's one of seven. And they argue. Boy, do they ever argue!
Does it really matter that they're opposites and argue a lot? I don't believe that 'love conquers all'. However, I do believe that disparate people and personalities can mesh together very well in partnership and marriage - in my personal experience of the world, I've seen marriages work out between couples whom everyone said would never go the distance, and I've seen marriages fail where the couple seemed 'destined' for each other.
In one thing, at least, they're quite united and very much the same: they're both fiercely loyal to Harry, and to each other, as friends - true Gryffindors. Beyond that, I don't find it matters if they're personality opposites. In the core things, they're a lot alike and, with commitment, those similarities would easily carry the day.
For fans of the Ron/Hermione ship, we'll never really see the development of their relationship. The story is told through Harry's eyes and with a focus on Harry's cumulative defeats of Voldemort, not on the relationship between Ron and Hermione. So the 'insider track' of what happens between Ron and Hermione is unlikely to be shown.
Does that mean the Ron/Hermione doesn't exist? Well, only in the way that anything out of sight doesn't exist because it's not in sight. There may very well be a taxi just around the corner, there may not: you won't know until you get to the corner, and if you don't make it to the corner, you'll never know.
At any rate, whatever Rowling comes out with in 'Half-Blood Prince', I fully hope that Ron and Hermione will continue to be friends and protagonists together, stubborn and passionate in their defence of and commitment to Harry.
And I'll be a Ron/Hermione shipper to my dying day.
--
Harry/Luna - Harry Potter
This is a short 'ship manifesto. More of a confession, really.
Harry/Luna is considered pure lunacy among most mainstream HP 'shippers. She's only appeared in one book, they haven't had more than a handful of scenes together, and it's far too early to be saying that there is any romantic interest between them.
Nevertheless, Harry/Luna is my Harry-inclusive OTP.
The chiefest reason I see the possibilities in Harry and Luna is because of the single scene between them, right at the end of 'Order of the Phoenix' when Harry skips the final dinner and wanders through the halls of Hogwarts. He comes upon Luna tacking up posters about her missing stuff and they talk.
It's not a long conversation, nor a particularly deep one. But this is the closest that Harry comes to baring his soul of the guilt and anger he feels over Sirius' death and his part in the prophecy. He doesn't speak to his best friend Ron, or Hermione - who's given emotional advice to him more than once. He doesn't speak to Ginny as someone who understands about Voldemort, or to Neville who might have been the prophecy's focus. He doesn't say a thing to Dumbledore, Remus, McGonagall, or the Weasleys.
But Luna does nothing more than asks a few vague questions about Sirius (whom she still calls Stubby Boardman) and offers up some of her own experiences, and Harry's kicked out of his own misery and given a new perspective.
Harry's different. Everyone knows that. He's different because of what he's done, and what's been done to him, and Luna understands that difference. What Harry has recently experienced in his life - ostracism, difference, mockery, disbelief - is what Luna has also experienced. The reasons for their varying experiences are vastly different, but give them a commonality that Harry doesn't really find in his other friendships.
One theme that runs through the books is Harry's desire to belong somewhere. He is the Odysseus of the wizarding world, trying to reach his 'home' but unable to find it in Privet Drive, Hogwarts, the Burrow, or Grimmauld Place. The closest he comes to it is in his hope of living with his godfather, Sirius - a hope that is cruelly thwarted at the end of 'Prisoner of Azkaban'. As of the end of 'Order of the Phoenix', Sirius is dead and that dream is shattered.
I can see Harry finding that sense of 'home' - of acceptance and understanding and belonging without crowding - with Luna, as I can't see him finding it among the cacophony of the Weasleys, or the pristine orderliness implied in the lives of the Grangers as represented by Hermione. I can also see Harry coming to accept that he'll never be 'ordinary' or 'normal' - not with his history, not with his past, and certainly not with the prophecy that has dictated his life from before his birth. Luna has accepted her difference, and I like the idea of her showing Harry that 'different' is not as bad as it might seem given his background with the Dursleys.
We don't get a clear idea of Luna's personality from the inside: as I mentioned in the Ron/Hermione essay, the books are told from Harry's POV. But I think that Harry would provide the practical grounding for Luna, even as she provided the whimsical side of the partnership and brought a new perspective to life. Her oddities might continue to be odd to Harry, but he'd enjoy the peculiarity, even as she'd appreciate the loyalty he had towards her in spite of her bizarre theories and ways.
My sister, B2, believes that the injuries in the infirmary scene in 'Order of the Phoenix' give a hint as to the way JKR has set up the pairings for the series. Both Ron and Hermione are badly injured and kept in the infirmary; Neville and Ginny are injured but otherwise okay; and Harry and Luna are only lightly injured. The theory is a little far-fetched in my opinion, but it matches the way I see personalities meshing - at least among the 'hextet' (Harry, Ron, Hermione; Neville, Ginny, and Luna).
It's nothing more than a projection at this stage, but even if JKR scuttles it, I have to say, I like the possibilities inherent in Harry/Luna. Sure, they'd never be 'normal', but then again, these are two people who've never been normal.
--
Next up: Batman/Wonder Woman - Justice League
