somethingtodowithpotter:

People still insist on inaccurately quoting that Sunday Times interview with Rowling to say that Ron and Hermione don’t work and shouldn’t have happened.

To be clear, the character-driven reason was that Rowling believes theirs is a “young relationship”: that while they would have been attracted to each other while they were young, they would not have lasted long-term because they constantly argue.

I think that Dumbledore would have had something to say about that: “age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.”

Sure, teenagers are hot-headed and passionate. They fight a lot because they are young, proud, stubborn, and think they know themselves even though they are still growing. Combative teenagers often mellow as they grow older.

And what would be left behind in Romione’s case? How about a woman seeing a man who has remained loyal in the face of envy and fear, swallowed his pride for a greater cause, loved his family and his friends, and always known how to make her laugh? And he? He would see a woman who is intelligent, passionate, and strong. One whose strength inspires rather than intimidates him. They bring different qualities to the table. Sometimes, those qualities clash. All relationships have an element of “combativeness,” as all couples fight and disagree sometimes. It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.

But to be frank, I don’t think Romione needs any justification. I don’t believe Rowling actually hates them or her now canon ending (after all, she had every chance to change it and didn’t). 

I think it’s more about her than about them. Rowling describes writing Romione as “clinging to the plot as she first imagined it” and that her motive for sticking to it was “wish fulfillment…reasons very little to do with literature.” 

Her doubts aren’t about her characters at all. They are reflections of her insecurities as an artist. She fears, having spent so much time so close to this work, that she has chosen wrong. She sees other paths she could have taken, and doubts herself. Worse, at the moment she said these things, she worshipped techniques of Literature as superior to the storytelling and strong characterizations that made her works so beloved.

Of course it’s ‘wish fulfilment.’ Everything in Harry Potter is. And the ending as written for Ron and Hermione is great on so many levels: because it reflects how far they came from hating each other to appreciating each other, because instead of the predictable arc of the Leading Lady falling for The Hero she fell for the normally ignored Sidekick, because it completes Ron’s emotional arc of wanting to be noticed/appreciated/loved by everyone by having him be beloved by a special person who loves him as he is and brings out the best in him, because he helped Hermione grow too by teaching her to question and challenge authority.

Ron and Hermione are plenty believable as a couple, especially when you allow for maturation and absorption of all they have been through over the course of 19 intervening years. Instead of getting hung up on regrets that Romione is insufficiently ‘Literary,’ Rowling should be proud that she wrote something unconventional, beautiful, and, yes, believable.