“Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends… friends … friends …
“
“Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy — Wheezy who is giving Dobby his jumper!” Dobby plucked at the shrunken maroon sweater he was now wearing over his shorts. “What?” Harry gasped. “They’ve got… they’ve got Ron?” “The thing Harry Potter will miss most, sir!” squeaked Dobby.
“I don’t think you should be an Auror, Harry. The Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, I thought everyone knew that. They’re working to bring down the Ministry of Magic from within using a mixture of dark magic and gum disease.”
Hot take: I’m a Romione shipper for the books, but (in the film series) I don’t really ship them after POA.
Forgive me, Romione shippers, for I have sinned…
I know it sounds a bit weird, but the later films altered the characterisations of Ron and Hermione so much that they (especially Hermione) are so unlike their book counterparts that it doesn’t really feel like the same pairing.
It doesn’t help that I personally find Emma Watson very irritating as Hermione. And I don’t mean in the ‘Hermione is supposed to be irritating’ kind of way. I honestly find her portrayal (especially from GOF onwards) to be bland and wooden.
I ship book!Ron and book!Hermione 100%. But film!Ron and film!Hermione? Nah, mate.
Film!Ron is funny and has a certain warmth to him, although I think that’s primarily Rupert Grint’s sheer talent blossoming through despite the meagre characterisation he was given to work with. I ship movie!Ron with someone who makes him happy; maybe film!Luna or film!Harry, since they actually show him appreciation and respect the majority of the time. He seems like a nice bloke (occasional bad joke aside), and overall a decent person. I mean, he’s based on book!Ron, for crying out loud; it’s very difficult to make Ron Weasley unlikable.
Film!Hermione, though? She’s an arrogant, mean little jerk who treats Ron like a petulant child she’s having to babysit 90% of the time (mostly in the films Steve Kloves wrote. Coincidence? I think not). She’s lacking in book!Hermione’s warmth and humanity, and seems almost perpetually irritated by everything around her. That might just be Emma Watson’s “reading” of the character, but I personally can’t stomach it. Film!Hermione can work herself into an early grave for all I care.
I didn’t mind film!Hermione in the first three films (mainly the first two, but she had her moments in the third film as well), but after that, I stopped caring. I can’t imagine what film!Ron actually sees in her, since she seems to regard him with bemusement, shock (whenever he shows intelligence) or irritation most of the time. I never got the sense that their personalities meshed well, in contrast to their book counterparts who were perfect compliments to each-other.
But what do you guys think? Is this heresy for a Romione shipper to say, or am I onto something here?
This is part of why I really can’t watch the movies.
Sorcerer’s Stone was a good adaptation. The only things that are really missing are the wizards’ duel and the logic puzzle, and they managed to get the work that those did spread out around the other plot points, so it makes sense. (Although the logic puzzle is an incredibly key piece of Hermione characterization. The entire rest of her character needs to be read through that lens, in the same way that the rest of Ron’s character needs to be read through the lens of the chess match. Replacing that with revised Devil’s Snare incident is the first hint of a serious misunderstanding of who Hermione is.)
CoS and PoA are fine (though SS is the only one I actually re-watch, so I can’t really comment on them). Ron gets swept under the rug a bit, but the general plot is at least in tact.
Starting in GoF, too much is left out. Too much is left out in GoF (no Dobby, no Sirius, no SPEW, no… too many things), and as a result, a lot of the key beats to come are just completely incoherent. By OotP, I literally can’t follow the plot in the films, because there’s too much missing and every moment is a sustained, No, that’s not right! (I should try re-watching them now, since it’s been a couple of years since I actually read through the books. Maybe I’ll be able to make sense of them with a little distance from the real story.) We miss the point.
But all of the little details and moments that make Ron and Hermione perfect are just… gone. Their dynamic is gone, their chemistry is gone, their opportunities to support and complement one another is gone.
It’s clear that in the films that we’re supposed to be shipping Harry and Hermione, but Dan and Emma have no chemistry, and it comes across on screen as a completely generic “Look! Here’s a boy and girl in proximity! They will ultimately bone!” romance. Like, movie!Harmony is the blandest, most stilted not-ship since Luke and Leia. The dance in DH? Ugh. It’s like, ew, no, let’s just be celibate forever.
In the films, frankly, it’s a lot easier to see Harry x Ron than any other ship involving members of the trio, no matter how hard Kloves tried to push Harry x Hermione.
What ends up happening, with the reduction of Ron’s character, is that he comes across as somebody’s love interest (why else is he there?) but he’s definitely not Hermione’s with the way she treats him. With the Harmony-pushing, it ends up looking like Hermione is mean to Ron because she’s jealous.
That makes so much sense now! Ron’s closeness with Harry is one of the only non-Harmione relationships that the film series didn’t completely get rid of. From that perspective, it makes so much sense that Hermione would jealous of Ron for being so close with Harry. No wonder she found him so irritating in the film; the screen-writer wanted her to be the closest to Harry, but Ron was always closer with him.
Heck, in the film series, I’m definitely more on board with Harry x Rom because their relationship was still treated with some semblance of respect. Ron x Hermione was ignored as much as possible by Steve Kloves, and the film counterparts of the characters seemed too unlike their book versions to make sense as a couple. And you all know my opinions on the Harry x Hermione pairing (hint: I find it uninteresting and I’ve never seen the two characters like that). By the power of deduction alone, Ron x Harry is the most believable pairing in the film!golden trio.
Books? I’m Romione all the way. But films? Harry x Ron is far more believable, and much more of a mutually-supportive relationship.
Interviewer: If you had to choose between Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Cho Chang, for you, who is the best couple for Harry?
Dan: Um, I would say Luna.
Interviewer: Luna?
Dan: Because I think…I think her and Harry have both had similar pasts, and that we’ve both had, um, we’ve both had people die who had been very close to us, and um, and…I think Harry’s got definitely…there is definitely an affinity, a very strong connection to Luna.
“The silver doe was nothing, nothing compared with Ron’s reappearance, he could not believe it. Shuddering with cold, he caught up the pile of clothes still lying at the water’s edge and began to pull them on. As he dragged sweater after sweater over his head, Harry stared at Ron, half expecting him to have disappeared every time he lost sight of him, and yet he had to be real: he had just dived into the pool, he had saved Harry’s life.”
That five second bit in
OOTP where Luna holds Harry’s hand ≥ every kiss scene in the entire film series
Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon.
Harry Potter;the boy who shipped (Romione)
Everyone’s facial expressions show their relationship to Luna during OOTP; Hermione is exasperated and annoyed, Harry is intrigued, Neville is a little confused, and Ron looks baffled but curious.
Headcanonsandmore 