headcanonsandmore:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter fifteen ‘The Unbreakable Vow’;
“He finally tracked her
down as she emerged from a girls’ bathroom on the floor below. She was
accompanied by Luna Lovegood, who was patting her vaguely on the back.
‘Oh, hello, Harry,’
said Luna. ‘Did you know one of your eyebrows is bright yellow?’
‘Hi, Luna. Hermione,
you left your stuff…’
He held out her books.
‘Oh, yes,’ said
Hermione in a choked voice, taking her things and turning away quickly to hide
the fact that she was wiping her eyes on her pencil case. ‘Thank you, Harry.
Well, I’d better be going…’
And she hurried off,
without giving Harry any time to offer words of comfort, though admittedly he
could not think of any.
‘She’s a bit upset,’
said Luna. ‘I thought at first it was Moaning Myrtle in there, but it turned
out to be Hermione. She said something about that Ron Weasley…’
‘Yeah, they’ve had a
row,’ said Harry.
‘He says very funny
things sometimes, doesn’t he?’ said Luna, as they set off down the corridor
together. ‘But he can be a bit unkind.
I noticed that last year.’”
I’m guessing Hermione
neglected to mention to Luna that she’d
set a flock of ravenous birds on Ron because he’d got a girlfriend.
Because Ron doing a
rather rude impression of Hermione in class doesn’t seem nearly as bad as Hermione
physically attacking Ron for the heinous crime of…er, dating someone who wasn’t
her. I would say that Hermione’s actions were more “unkind” than Ron’s were.
Yeah, this bit always
irritated me. I’m not going to lie, Ron doesn’t come across as good here by any
means, but it’s a little weird that this is clearly framed as Ron being just as
in the wrong as Hermione is. Once again, according to JK Rowling, physical
abuse is okay as long as it’s Hermione Granger doing it.
For all his faults, Ron
NEVER physically abused Hermione. Hermione, on the other hand, has physically
attacked him at least twice. And yet
Ron is considered in fanon to be the abusive one. The mind boggles…
Imagine yourself in Ron’s
shoes. One of your friends (who you also happen to fancy) sends a flock of
angry birds to attack you because you started dating someone-else. You’d
probably be a little angry at them about it, and will probably hold a grudge
against them for a while.
It’s especially weird that
this line comes from Luna, a girl who actually got along with Ron very well (so
much so, that it’s a popular fan theory that she had a crush on him). And when
during the previous year did she see Ron being unkind? If anything, Ron’s fifth
year was (tied with his second year) the year where he was the least-unkind to
people around him.
I think JK Rowling fed
Luna this line to make the row between Ron and Hermione seem more of an equal
playing field, because it doesn’t really sound like something Luna would say.
On a related note, JK
Rowling later said in an interview that HBP was the year that Ron ‘became more
worthy of Hermione’. Make of that what you will. I’ve also heard that she based
Hermione off of herself and Ron off a former friend of JK Rowling’s. Which
raises even more questions, but I digress…
Don’t get me wrong, I
do like Hermione as a character, but she is certainly not without flaws.
Good post. Neither Ron or Hermione were at their best over here but I’d like to add something else. Ron did NOT make fun of Hermione just for the heck of it. Hermione started it. Hermione laughed unkindly at Ron’s mustache. He got back at her by doing a cruel impression of Hermione raising her hand in class. Then, she ran away crying. I repeat: Hermione was the one who started it. (Heck, most of the time, Ron never starts anything. A character attacks and he reacts.) Anyway…
Ron refusing to speak to Hermione and giving her the cold shoulder because of the Krum thing? Ron at his worst behaviour. That was wrong and mean of him. I will not defend him over here. I won’t defend him when he’s wrong. Ron kissing Lavender Brown? Well, not that bad in my eyes. A girl showed interest in him and he reciprocated. A girl did not give him mixed signals while talking about how “fanciable” another man was. Were Hermione and Ron dating when the Lavender business happened? Did Hermione ask him out on a romantic date? NO.
“You were going to ask me?” “Yes but if you think it’s stupid, I won’t bother!” (Forgive any inaccuracies in this convo because I’m relying on memory alone.) Hmmm…definitely not invitation of the year. Sure, it was douchey of Ron but definitely not unforgivable or irredeemable.
Now, let’s look at the way “mature and intelligent” Hermione handled this. First, she sets birds on him. She’s a prefect, model student and “little miss perfect” (if I may quote Rite Skeeter), who confiscates a fanged frizbee from a student but forgets that attacking a fellow prefect is even worse. The next day, Ron has scratches and cuts and is visibly confused and angry, but he doesn’t report her because he doesn’t want to create more drama. He displays more maturity and decides to stop speaking to her because his ex-friend obviously has issues. Then, instead of looking remorseful or a bit worried about attacking him, Hermione laughs at him in class. So, yeah, I’m not going to condemn Ron for getting back at her. Both of them were assholes to each other.
It kind of reminds me of my siblings’ fights. (I’m not saying that Ron and Hermione are siblings but the situations are quite similar.) My sister was a big crier while my brother rarely shed tears. During their fights, both of them were equally nasty to each other. Both of them kicked and fought and exchanged verbal insults. However, my parents (bless them) always took my sister’s side because she was the one who ended the fights by turning into a human fountain. It didn’t matter that my brother was in pain as well. It didn’t matter that my sister hurt him just as much as he hurt her. She was comforted while my brother was punished because she was the one who cried. She cried, therefore, she was obviously the victim. (Or my personal favourite: his feelings didn’t matter because he had a penis.)
To make matters worse, the readers are supposed to feel sorry for Hermione. The readers are supposed to shake their heads at Nasty Ron because how dare he have some self-respect? Rowling also made sweet Luna say that, “he could be unkind at times” which I found unrealistic because both Hermione and Ron can be unkind. In fact, in OotP, it was actually Hermione who was unkind to Luna about her beliefs. If my memory doesn’t betray me, all Ron did was stand up for Hagrid. I doubt Hermione told Luna the whole story because Luna would not have been so sympathetic if she learned about the birds thing. Heck, it would’ve been so much better if Luna called her out on her BS.
Headcanonsandmore 