I apologize for the clickbait title, but I assure you I do have advice for JK on how to fix Harry Potter. Not the character, but the series. I'm sure many of you think the books are perfect and shouldn't be changed. Well, there's a problem with that: JK herself, the creator, isn't 100% happy with how they turned out, and even Emma Watson can't wrap her head around a certain aspect. I am of course talking about the relationship between Ron and Hermione.
Again, many of you undoubtedly don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I agree with JK and Emma--it doesn't make sense. I remember being young and reading the books for the first time. I had just finished Prisoner of Azkaban, and I was about to start Goblet of Fire (Order of the Phoenix wasn't out yet). I was having a conservation with my sister and she mentioned that her friend Rachel said that Ron and Hermione get together. The notion was laughable and preposterous to me, and I was in the seventh grade. So, even back then I was calling shenanigans.
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| Emma sells this shot, but Rupert doesn't. |
But anyway, the reason why Ron and Hermione don't work is because they are two too different people. Hermione is very cerebral, and Ronald, while he isn't a dummy, he doesn't have the patience to deal with such things. He acts before he thinks. Not Hermione, she thinks before she acts. Some would think then that they are perfect for each other, except that there are plenty of times in the books where Ron and Hermione don't have an iota of tolerance for each other's methods. Add to that, Ron isn't very emotionally intelligent, and Hermione is, and despite her logical mind and methods, she is very in tune with her emotions.
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| Looks like she regrets some of her choices. |
I do understand why JK paired Ron and Hermione though. It seemed like the obvious choice. In HP, we have Harry and Hermione who are outsiders to the wizarding world, and then there's Ron who has grown up in it. Give him a hot (redheaded), younger sister, and we've got the perfect situation necessary for pulling Harry and Hermione into the world they belong to, and now, instead of being friends, they're all family, which is especially good for Harry.
Now, while I agree with JK and Emma that Hermione and Ron don't make any sense, I completely disagree with them that the better option for Hermione is Harry. No, no, no. In the HP universe, Harry and Ginny are OTP. Ginny is the only girl who can look beyond Harry's celebrity status and see him as just an ordinary guy who has had extraordinary situations thrust upon him his entire life. Plus, Ginny is a very strong and adept girl; she can match Harry wit for wit and in magical ability. While she may have originally been a fan girl, that's not who Ginny becomes.
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| What kind of name is "Ginerva" anyway? |
Unfortunately, that's not the kind of relationship between Harry and Hermione. She's not his fan per se, but she does put him on a pedestal. She looks up to him and defers to his experience over her smarts. While everyone thinks the world of Hermione, Hermione thinks Harry the greater person and wizard. She even called him a great wizard in Philosopher's Stone and shrugged off her cleverness as being nothing that great. And she turned to him to be her instructor in Order of the Phoenix when they formed Dumbledore's Army. Harry and Hermione are great friends, but when one of them looks up to the other rather than seeing him as an equal, they could never make it as lovers.
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| Harry does sort of become an action hero. |
So then, what's my advice for fixing Hermione and Ron's relationship? Well, there are two paths:
1. JK can rewrite all the HP books so that Hermione and Ron seem more of a match for each other,
2. JK can write new books for the series that take place after Hogwarts where Ron and Hermione's relationship goes through a rough patch, and they have to figure out how to come together again and maybe even change in the process to become each other's soul mate.
Now, Option 2 doesn't need any explanation and it would be the easier path of the two. But I think Option 1 is the better of the two, though I'm sure many of you find it offensive. I'm not going to lie, it is the more time consuming option, but let's look at some of the objections to Option 1 and why they're not a big deal.
Objection 1: "But the movies have already been made!"
The films are not canon, they are adaptations. Besides which, so much was changed from the books to the films, what difference would it make? All the important stuff is in the films. And, who's to say the films won't be remade someday? Maybe they'll be remade better than they were made. Even Star Wars could be susceptible to a remake one day.
Objection 2: "Ron and Hermione are who they are. How could you possibly change Ron and Hermione so they're more compatible?"
Honestly, it shouldn't be that difficult... in theory. Make Hermione less of a brainiac and maybe reshape some of her values so they're more in line with Ron's, or make Hermione more of an action-oriented person rather than a let's-think-about-it type of person. As for Ron, don't make him so thick and maybe even make him brilliant in his own way. Hell, I remember back in Philosopher's Stone that Ron was really awesome at wizard's chess, but Hermione was terrible which was weird because Hermione should've been better at it given her personality. That whole instance suggests to me that that may have been, or was supposed to be, the foundation of their relationship--the fact that Ron was good at a brainy thing that Hermione wasn't. Maybe make wizard's chess the thing that Ron and Hermione bond over.
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| "I wish I was playing chess instead of on the run." |
Another angle is to develop Ron and Hermione into lead characters themselves and have scenes where they're going through character development by themselves without Harry needing to be there. I know he's the main character and all, but that doesn't mean he has to be on every page. Characters don't need to be asking, "Hey, where's Harry?" when he's not around. He can be autonomous. So, without him in the picture, Ron and Hermione can discuss things just between the two of them. And with more time to themselves, whether with each other or alone, there's more time and opportunity to develop them and even turn them into more, well-rounded characters. We can really get into their heads and learn what they're about.
Objection 3: "But the books are already written!"
So? They're not set in stone. And even if they were, that doesn't mean that different versions can't be made. It's not like rewriting history or the laws of physics.
Hell, you ever hear of a guy called Stephen King? He's a writer, too. Very good with horror. Anyway, he's written a popular series himself called The Dark Tower. And about two decades ago, he stopped writing it after the fifth book, and people were begging him to finish it. One guy on death row even wrote to him to ask him how it ended and that he would take the secret of the ending with him to the grave. Eventually, SK picked TDT up again, but instead of just picking up where he left off, he decided to revise and expand the entire thing. He even found instances where he had confused characters with place names and fixed it. Even though he was five books in, he still re-wrote the entire series and finished it.
There's another famous writer. Well, actually he was a poet, but I'm sure you've heard of him. His names was Walt Whitman. He wrote Leaves of Grass. And rewrote it. And rewrote it. And rewrote it again. And then, do you know what he did? That's right; he rewrote it again. In truth, I don't know how many times he went back to it, but it was a bunch of times. I would've stopped buying his work after the third time he rewrote it, but someone out there was. Hell, he was still getting published after the fourth time.
The point is, just because Harry Potter is over, that doesn't mean that the story can't go through further developments. I'm a self-published author, and I'm constantly making adjustments to my work. Mostly formatting stuff, but almost half of it is editing. But, if JK really wants to make Ron and Hermione's relationship make sense, she can do that. She has the technology. And honestly, I think whatever she ended up doing with their relationship, whether it was kept intact or not, or she wrote later stories to fix it, I honestly think it would be better for the story as a whole. So, I support JK's decision to rewrite HP.
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| Why? Because you have to. |
Keep writing, my friends.
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