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Harry Potter, Personally: Relationships 2
In our previous installment of “Harry Potter, Personally,” we looked at some of Harry’s friends and enemies. Today we get to look at the other side of relationships: drama and romance. No book set during the school years would be complete (or accurate) without an extra-large helping of jealousy, crushes, and heartbreak. Oh, joy.
To be fair, most of the Harry Potter books aren’t too heavy-handed in this department, but there’s still plenty to make an older reader cringe. Is it excruciating to re-live these kinds of experiences in a book because it’s been so long, or is it because it hasn’t been long enough? I’ll let you decide.
DRAMA
Family Drama
The series starts with Harry’s earliest and most recurring source of drama, the Dursleys. His horrid aunt and uncle and their spoiled son make Harry’s muggle life comically miserable. They make Harry wear his overweight cousin’s old clothes. They send him Christmas gifts like a solitary toothpick or an old tissue. They make him sleep with the spiders in the cupboard under the stairs. Their persnickety abhorrence for all things magical (including Harry) is a source of drama at the beginning and end of each book, but it’s not meant to be a weighty one.
Boy Drama
The drama between the Big Three—Harry, Ron, and Hermione—is much worse than Harry’s mistreatment at home. It’s less enjoyable to read, too, since most of it is boy drama. I don’t mean drama about boys, although there is a bit of that. I mean drama stemming from the boys. Hermione may get frazzled about homework and exams, but she’s not usually walking off in a petulant huff like the boys tend to do.
Ron’s Drama
In my opinion, Ron’s insecurity is the main source of drama in the series. He’s just too unsure of himself, and it leads to all kinds of conflict. He feel overshadowed as Harry’s poor, red-headed friend and can’t just man up and move on. Instead, he’s mad at Harry for seeming to enter the Triwizard Tournament without telling him, he’s insecure about his own lousy Quidditch skills when Harry is made captain of the team, and he’s jealous of Harry’s close friendship with Hermione. He’s also jealous when Hermione dates Viktor Krum, and he tries to make her jealous in return when he finally snags Lavender Brown as a girlfriend. All this is tedious to read, and it makes Ron one of my least favorite characters in the book.
Harry’s Drama
Harry is guilty of his fair share of drama, although it’s not nearly as bad as Ron’s. Harry is a bad friend for nearly a whole book because the connection between his mind and Voldemort’s is causing him to be irrationally angry. He also stoops to Ron’s level during the Triwizard Tournament, refusing to talk to Ron and confiding in Hermione instead. His tendency is also to isolate himself when there’s a dangerous job to do. While that’s noble, it’s also obnoxious. His friends want to help, and trying to leave them behind is only going to cause drama. But overall, Harry is pretty level-headed—a refreshing change compared with ol’ Ronald.
ROMANCE
A Few Flings
Hermione is the first member of the trio to spark someone’s romantic interest. In the fourth book, Viktor Krum singles her out during the Triwizard Tournament, asking her to the Yule Ball and even staying in touch with her after the year ends. In the end, she was never too serious about Krum, so they drift apart.
Harry is next on the romance train. He has a crush on Cho Chang during the fourth book, but he actually dates her in the fifth. Their relationship is awkward, fraught with drama, and short-lived—all of which is accurate for most high school relationships. He can’t fathom why she’s always an emotional basket case and doesn’t seem heartbroken when things don’t work out.
Ron is the last to attract a female. In the sixth book, Lavender Brown foists herself upon him, and Ron doesn’t object. Instead, he welcomes the chance to make Hermione jealous. He throws himself headlong into a superficial relationship with her until it becomes too sickening even for him. His goal of making Hermione jealous does succeed, though, and they gradually admit their attraction to each other. Which leads to my next complaint.
The “Real” Thing for Ron and Hermione
Rowling crafts a relationship between Ron and Hermione that is foreshadowed well and ends with a nice little bow in the epilogue. But…I mean…why? Speaking as someone who is 100% Hermione (all right, I’m 80% Hermione and 20% Luna), there is no way on earth or Hogwarts or anywhere else that Hermione would end up with Ron. If there’s one thing competence can’t stand, it’s whiny insecurity. Ron is irritable, defensive, self-conscious, and lazy—and he’s not even funny! If he had a great sense of humor like Fred and George, I could understand her attraction to him. But as it is, it’s too far-fetched.
And do you know what? When I researched it for this article, Rowling admitted it. In an interview, she said, “I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.” While that does make sense, it’s still a bummer because their relationship doesn’t ring true.
The “Real” Thing for Harry and Ginny
And, frankly, neither does Harry’s ending up with Ginny. I think it’s because of her whiplash-sudden character transformation in book five. Overnight she transforms from the shy, silent baby sister into an assertive, attractive prankster. She’s more interesting this way, but it doesn’t feel realistic to me. It feels like Rowling suddenly decided she wanted to stick Harry and Ginny together in the end but realized there was nothing at all interesting about Ginny. She fixed that, but not in a way that feels natural.
RANT OVER
While I do love the Harry Potter series as a whole, some of these relational issues are tedious for me to read. But, as I mention in a previous article, that’s all right because the intended audience is students, not adults. I’m sure most students would find the drama and romance accurate and entertaining. For me, there’s so much more to enjoy about Harry Potter that I can easily overlook these annoyances. Next time we’ll look at one of my favorite aspects of the series: heroism. Be sure to tune in for the final installment of “Harry Potter, Personally.”
One Comment on “Harry Potter, Personally: Relationships 2”
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Emily, I am loving this entire series! Like you, I always felt the final matchups of Hermione and Ron as well as Harry and Ginny didn’t ring true. Looking forward to your final installment!