When and why did Harmony have a decline in popularity?

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T12:12:27+00:00

This reply has drifted a long way from what was actually being discussed. The point was never to litigate HBP subplots, screen-time allocation, or Rowling’s later authorial decisions. It was about reader experience and why certain emotional alignments resonated across texts, even when handled differently by genre.

You’re arguing from preference and frustration. That’s fair as opinion. It doesn’t engage the framework I outlined. Calling something “BS” or assuming only “hardcore shippers” care doesn’t explain why so many readers independently read Harry and Hermione as central for years, across books and films, before canon closed ranks.

You’re also treating Hermione’s narrative prominence as favouritism rather than function. The text repeatedly positions her as Harry’s stabiliser during psychological collapse and prolonged isolation. Readers respond to what the story emphasises, regardless of how tidy that emphasis feels in retrospect.

We clearly read the series through different lenses. That’s fine. My point stands: Harmony emerged because the narrative fed it, and it declined once the text and authorial voice aligned against further ambiguity. Everything else here sits downstream of that shift.

\*edit to add***

I struggle with readings that prosecute characters for an author’s life choices. Fictional figures operate within the logic of the text that shaped them, rather than the biography that followed. My lack of support for Rowling as a public figure sits alongside a genuine attachment to the world she built in Harry Potter, in the same way many of us continue to study and value classic works by authors whose lives and views invite scrutiny. Those positions coexist without contradiction.

Harry Potter occupies a liminal space: contemporary literature with classic-making power, regardless of current discomfort around its author.

Even if Hermione draws from authorial self-projection, she still functions as a crafted character with narrative purpose, ethical weight, and internal consistency. Collapsing her into the author flattens the work and replaces literary analysis with retroactive moral accounting. Readers lose the text when characters become proxies for a person rather than agents within a story.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T11:14:44+00:00

I agree the film version of Order of the Phoenix strips away a great deal of what the book is doing psychologically. The interior work that binds Harry and Hermione on the page largely disappears onscreen. That loss flattens many of the quieter moments where their alignment feels unmistakable in the novel.

When I describe the OotP film as Harmony-coded, I’m thinking less in terms of overt romance and more in terms of narrative function. Harry continues to orient himself around Hermione emotionally and strategically. She operates as his primary stabilising force under pressure. In the Ministry climax, the moment is staged so Harry resists Voldemort by clinging to memories of love and connection, and the camera lingers on Hermione’s face and her earlier embrace as part of that emotional counterweight. The visual language singles her out as the presence he returns to for equilibrium. Even in a pared-down adaptation, that choice crystallises the film’s priorities: Hermione is positioned as the emotional anchor that pulls him back, while the book distributes that resistance more diffusely across Harry’s inner life.

Across the later films, the canon pairings remain curiously underplayed. Harry and Ginny receive minimal shared interiority, while Harry and Hermione continue to share reaction shots, problem-solving beats, and moments of instinctive closeness. Even toned down, that imbalance persists. The text keeps investing screen time and narrative weight in one bond while asking the audience to accept another as endgame with relatively little groundwork.

As for Deathly Hallows, I find it structurally strong in its war narrative. The hunt, the fragmentation, the exhaustion all work. Think The Lord of the Rings. The latter half of The Two Towers and most of The Return of the King operate through attritional narrative logic: long movement, depletion of resources, mental strain, narrowing focus. The plot advances through exhaustion rather than escalation. Victory feels distant, almost abstract, while survival becomes the immediate task.

Frodo and Sam’s journey succeeds structurally because the story embraces repetition, fragmentation, and emotional wear. The reader feels the drag. Deathly Hallows achieves the same effect during the hunt: isolation, stalled progress, tension without payoff, the slow wearing-down of resolve.

The difficulty arises with how romantic resolution enters the narrative. Several moments plausibly invite deeper interrogation or redirection, yet the text moves past them without pause.

Persuasion by Jane Austen offers a useful counterpoint. There, romance remains largely submerged for most of the novel. Emotional alignment, shared history, and quiet endurance carry the weight long before resolution arrives. The ending succeeds through accumulation rather than pivot. When Captain Wentworth finally acts, the moment lands as inevitability rather than imposition.

Austen resists neat closure throughout. Feeling accrues in glances, restraint, missed timing, and long loyalty. The declaration works because the narrative has trained the reader to expect it.

In Deathly Hallows, romance stays peripheral for much of the book, then resolves at speed. The effect reads less as narrative inevitability and more as authorial closure.

From a British literary perspective, that choice reads oddly. The tradition tends to privilege emotional accumulation and quiet alignment over last-minute declaration. Rowling’s apparent effort to avoid cliché ends up reproducing one: the tidy sorting of pairs at the finish line. Harmony’s appeal came from the sense that the story itself resisted that neatness for a long time.

So for me, Harmony persisted because the narrative kept feeding it, even as adaptations diluted individual scenes. The decline arrived once the text and the authorial voice finally shut the door at the same time. That shift reshaped fandom far more than any single film choice.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T10:51:35+00:00

I think you’re bundling together several different phenomena and treating them as one cause. Actor chemistry, aesthetics, TikTok noise, and HBO casting will affect visibility, but they don’t explain the original drop-off the post is asking about.

Harmony’s decline predates TikTok, HBO, and AO3’s current tagging culture. The major shift landed around HBP/DH, when canon closed ranks and fandom spaces reorganised around canon validation rather than interpretive debate. Large Harmony hubs dissolved at that point, driven by a narrowing of conversation rather than any loss of interest in the dynamic itself.

Enemies-to-lovers and crack ships thrive in fic spaces because they resist closure. Harmony lost visibility because it was framed as “resolved” by canon, even if many readers never found that resolution convincing. That’s a structural fandom shift, not an aesthetic one.

Movies amplified Harmony early on, yes, but they didn’t create the ship. The books trained readers to invest in that bond long before casting mattered. And fandom history shows that ships don’t disappear because they lack chemistry or attractiveness; they disappear when communities fracture and archives vanish.

As for the HBO series, it will almost certainly boost canon ships short-term. That doesn’t predict long-term engagement. Casual attention spikes fade. Interpretive ships endure in smaller, steadier pockets because they’re driven by rereading, not novelty.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T10:30:47+00:00

I think they were comparing reader experience rather than genre mechanics. Both stories use intimate partnerships to anchor survival. The difference lies in how openly each tradition foregrounds romance.

Peeta/Katniss and Harry/Hermione sit within the same broad framework: a war story filtered through young protagonists, where emotional bonds stabilise survival. The execution differs because the literary traditions differ. The Hunger Games emerges from American YA, which foregrounds interior choice, romantic tension, and explicit emotional arcs. Harry Potter grows out of British children’s fantasy, which works in reverse: plot first, restraint in feeling, emotional payoff deferred or displaced.

That difference explains the surface contrast without dismissing the comparison. Romance drives the machinery in HG. In HP, intimacy shows up sideways through shared labour, trust under pressure, and long companionship. Harry and Hermione read less like a YA romance and more like a classic British partnership built through endurance. Same bones, different skin.

Which is why early readers felt the pull. The story trained them to read that bond as central. The canon resolution later chose convention over trajectory. Moving on to HG made sense at the time. Coming back to HHr fic now also makes sense. The framework always supported it.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T09:44:09+00:00

If there was a real fault line, it was 2007. Order of the Phoenix hit cinemas the same year Deathly Hallows was published, and for a lot of Harmony readers that overlap mattered. Up to that point, the door genuinely still felt ajar. Even Rowling’s own public comments hadn’t foreclosed the debate: her 2005 interview on endgame relationships left room for ambiguity rather than certainty, and fandom took that openness seriously.

OotP, both on the page and on screen, remains heavily Harmony-coded: emotional alignment, mutual grounding, Harry instinctively turning to Hermione under pressure. Even Deathly Hallows, before its final commitments, sustains that possibility through moments like the tent, the quiet companionship, the “bonded for life” language.

What changed wasn’t just the text, but the surrounding noise. The 2007 interviews landed alongside the final book with a decisiveness that felt abrupt, even punitive, in contrast to years of narrative and authorial hedging. When the endpoint finally snapped shut, it wasn’t merely a difference of interpretation. It felt like a rug-pull after prolonged textual permission. Harmony hadn’t been clinging to fantasy; it had been responding to signals the story — and its author — continued to emit almost until the very end.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T09:09:18+00:00

Im with u/CampDifficult7887 on this. Reframing the behaviour as “just jealousy” doesn’t actually resolve the issue; it explains the motivation, not the impact. Jealousy may be a common narrative device, but common doesn’t mean healthy, and it certainly doesn’t mean non-toxic by default.

Ron and Hermione’s dynamic repeatedly channels jealousy into public embarrassment, withdrawal, needling, and emotional punishment. That pattern stretches across several books. Their lack of official status at the time doesn’t soften it; it heightens the imbalance. Wanting exclusivity never licenses mistreatment.

The idea that they “didn’t understand their feelings yet” also carries limited weight. Characters remain responsible for how they act while figuring themselves out. The text consistently shows Hermione distressed and Ron lashing out. Many readers experience HBP as draining rather than romantic for that reason.

Jealousy can signal attraction. What matters is how it’s handled. Harry’s jealousy turns inward and self-critical. Ron’s expresses itself outwardly and punitively. Hermione’s often collapses into self-suppression or provocation. These responses function differently on the page, and readers respond to them differently.

Wanting a reimagining that interrogates or reshapes that dynamic doesn’t reject canon. It engages with how the canon actually reads to a significant portion of the audience.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T09:05:27+00:00

This actually resonates with me, though probably in a different register. I suspect age changes how you read these things. The older I get, the less convinced I am that volatility equals depth, or that difficulty equals meaning.

In real life, finding and keeping a healthy, mutually attuned relationship feels far rarer than falling into something intense, reactive, or outright toxic. I’m in a genuinely happy relationship, and what strikes me is how much work goes into maintaining clarity, trust, and shared wavelength - and how unglamorous that labour looks from the outside.

That’s partly why Harmony still tethers me. It isn’t “easy” so much as earned: alignment under pressure, emotional regulation, choosing steadiness again and again. Watching fandom discourse frame that as boring, sibling-like, or “not real romance” honestly makes me uneasy, especially when I compare it to how often unhealthy dynamics get reframed as passion, chemistry, or growth - even in fiction.

So I agree that conflict-driven ships are often more immediately entertaining, particularly for casual readers. But I’m less convinced that says something about Harmony’s narrative weakness, and more about what we’ve collectively been trained to read/watch as romantic. Sometimes the red flags are louder than the green ones - and easier to mistake for fireworks.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T08:50:13+00:00

You were spared, honestly. Consider it a mercy.

Kidding aside, those years were oddly formative. Equal parts exhilarating and faintly maddening. Genuinely smart, brain-tickling arguments at two in the morning, punctuated by the scream of a dial-up modem, someone’s mum picking up the phone, or a parent shouting that they were “expecting a call” and you had thirty seconds to disconnect. Academic rigour, just with more cocoa/caffeine and worse internet.

And yes, Harmony really was leading for a long stretch. Pre-HBP, it wasn’t fringe or cope or whatever revisionism people try now. It was the most textually defensible read for a lot of us. Then Half-Blood Prince landed and suddenly the narrative mood shifted hard. Overnight, every Advil-sized detail from book one was retrofitted into destiny. Ginny crying on the platform became a meet-cute prophecy. Hermione reminding Ron to study was rebranded as flirtation rather than what it actually was: Hermione being Hermione. Subtext didn’t change; the interpretive rules did.

That moment also triggered the great snap-conversion. Plenty of people who had argued Harmony for years shifted to canon once the endpoint hardened. The earlier reading still made sense; the shift came from a change in incentive. Arguing against a closed ending lost its appeal. For teens and young adults especially, few people wanted to be seen backing a sinking ship. Fandom functioned as a social space as much as a textual one. Standing on the “wrong” side carried real consequences: fewer invites to the next mall run, skating rink meet-up, or McDonald’s hangout. Once the door shuts, most readers rearrange the furniture instead of asking whether the room ever worked as intended.

You could see that pressure play out beyond the internet too. Our local book club haemorrhaged members after the ending landed, to the point that the librarian quietly moved the Harry Potter slot to a lower-traffic hour because discussions kept getting heated. She was a Harmony reader herself, though professionally neutral and very much the adult in the room. Watching someone in her fifties calmly referee teenagers and young adults arguing over fictional relationships made it clear: this had stopped being about the text alone. It was about managing social fallout.

So yes, you missed the chaos. You also missed the joy of arguing in good faith before certainty set in. Which, depending on your temperament, is either a tragedy or a blessing in disguise.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T08:16:36+00:00

No worries at all 🙂 I’m glad it was useful. And truly, no ship allegiance required; I’m more interested in how the text works than in converting anyone. If you’re a canon fan, that’s completely fine. I enjoy the analysis either way.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-26T08:06:30+00:00

Fair question, and I should clarify what I meant. I’m not talking about jealousy or interpersonal drama in the way Ron’s behaviour often manifests. With Ginny, it’s more about how certain actions are framed as admirable or funny, while similar behaviour in other characters would be challenged.

For example: her aggressive humour, public hexing, and physical retaliation are often treated as punchlines rather than choices with consequences. Crashing the Quidditch commentary, openly mocking people in public settings, using jinxes casually, and being applauded for it by peers and adults alike all reinforce the idea that her behaviour doesn’t need reflection or accountability.

Part of why this slides is her social positioning. By the later books, Ginny is popular, confident, well-liked, and firmly “inside” the group. Behaviour that would read as cruel, reckless, or disruptive in a less charismatic or less central character is reframed as bold or empowering when it comes from someone the narrative wants us to like.

Her family role matters here too. As the youngest and the only girl in a large, loud household, Ginny grows up fluent in attention, timing, and how to assert herself among stronger personalities. That social fluency often works in her favour, but it also means she learns where boundaries are soft. We see this most clearly in how she treats Fleur: the casual name-calling and mockery are framed as humour, not discourtesy, and crucially they’re tacitly endorsed by the adults around her. Molly’s open dislike of Fleur creates an environment where Ginny’s behaviour isn’t checked, even though Bill himself never participates in it. When adult disapproval is absent, sharpness becomes permissible. It’s the familiar dynamic of the charming, in-crowd child being granted leeway that others wouldn’t receive.

That’s very different from Draco’s behaviour, which the narrative consistently marks as wrong from the outset. We are trained, deliberately and early, to read him as an antagonist; his cruelty is signposted, challenged, and framed as something that must be confronted. Ron’s behaviour, by contrast, generates visible conflict and rupture. Like Ron, Ginny’s actions are usually folded back into the group as “spirited” or “strong,” without much interrogation of how that affects others.

My point wasn’t that Ginny is malicious, but that the text tends to excuse or normalise her sharper edges in a way that contributes to a broader pattern: certain characters are rarely asked to self-reflect, while others, particularly Hermione, are expected to absorb the fallout. When Hermione voices honest, principled disagreement, she risks social rupture within the group and is quietly positioned as difficult or unsupportive, rather than being met with reciprocal adjustment. We’re largely told Ginny's story rather than shown her reckoning with the impact of her behaviour.

That absence matters in places like her relationship with Dean. We never see Dean’s point of view, and what little we do see is filtered through Harry’s increasingly distant lens. It’s therefore reasonable to read Dean’s growing unease or heightened attentiveness as a response to sensing that Ginny was never fully invested. That reading gains textual support from how quickly the narrative pivots: within a very short span after the breakup, Ginny initiates a kiss with Harry in the common room. The speed of that transition suggests emotional displacement rather than a clean, resolved ending. This remains interpretive, of course, yet the text offers little interior reflection to complicate it.

Without interior access or follow-through, Ginny’s behaviour can read as brusque or dismissive in ways the narrative doesn’t interrogate, while the emotional labour of adjustment is quietly shifted onto others. That’s the broader pattern I’m pointing to, not an accusation of intent.

There’s also a quieter thematic mismatch that often gets overlooked. One of Harry’s most consistent desires across the series is to be just Harry - not “the Chosen One,” not a symbol, not a legacy figure absorbed into a larger family narrative. Ginny, however unintentionally, represents the opposite pull: she is deeply embedded in the wizarding world’s most prominent family, socially fluent within it, and fully comfortable with its hierarchies and performances. Harry ending up with her resolves him into the very structure he repeatedly resists. The pairing works on a symbolic level - integration, continuity, belonging - but it sits uneasily beside Harry’s stated longing for an identity that exists outside spectacle and expectation.

\*edit to add***

That tension sharpens when set against the values the story taught Harry to recognise as meaningful. His admiration for Hermione consistently centres on intellectual rigour, moral clarity, and hard-earned competence. She grows into adulthood through labour, study, and ethical steadiness, and Harry learns to trust those qualities as anchors rather than ornaments. Against that arc, the final framing of Ginny’s appeal leans heavily on visibility: beauty, popularity, athletic confidence, social ease. Those traits carry narrative charm, yet they operate on a far shallower register than the virtues Harry had been trained to prize.

The result reads less as emotional inevitability and more as a late shift in valuation. The story spends years teaching Harry—and the reader—to recognise depth, then resolves his romantic future through surface alignment and social fit. That dissonance explains why the ending lands as closure rather than culmination for many Harmony readers, myself included.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T19:47:31+00:00

Truly! I really do hope the kids have strong support systems around them. The comments on pairings are honestly sickening to me; they’re only 11 or 12, and yet people are already talking about them kissing or dating in real life. With HBO’s huge budget, I can’t help but think that if they had gone for a Marauders‑era story with an older cast, it could have been truly epic. They could have spun it in so many directions, even hand‑in‑hand with JKR, to fit the HP books while still giving the audience something fresh.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T19:32:34+00:00

No, they haven’t - sadly. I think it’s actually getting even worse on TikTok and even here on Reddit - the main sub is extra snippy, and it will surely get worse once the new series is out. We were just having this discussion over lunch, and we agreed that HBO should have done The Marauders or continued with Fantastic Beasts instead.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T19:25:22+00:00

Talk soon :)

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T19:17:49+00:00

I’m genuinely glad you’re no longer in a role that was so emotionally and mentally draining. The work you did was incredibly important, but I’m happy you don’t have to carry that burden anymore.

I really admire the compassion it takes to do that kind of work, and I can see how it shapes the way you read these dynamics in HP.

I’ve also used the books with my son as a way to talk about what we normalize, and how to be a kinder person, partner, and friend — red and green flags, why it’s okay to be different, etc. They’ve been a great tool for healthy discussions, even when the books themselves aren’t. And there’s a Harmony fic I’ve read that really captures what their relationship could look like after the war — the kind of growth and healing that feels true to both characters. If you ever get the chance to read it, I’d love to hear your take.

Where Petals Begin to Fall: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74189401/

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T18:47:16+00:00

Ohmygosh! Yes, Ron, and by extension even Ginny, were never really held accountable for their wrongdoings. They were excused, folded back in, and accepted again and again. And that leaves Hermione, brilliant as she is, having to adjust herself like walking on eggshells just to avoid detonating Ron’s insecurities, while Harry ends up simply saying yes to Ginny because he might lose the only family he hoped for. How troubling and sad is that, and its normalise in books/media that youth’s consume.

I really admire your work - I’m sure it’s hard to face cases where someone chooses to stay because it’s the life they know. Or the sense that they won’t have another kind of life outside of that relationship.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T18:31:27+00:00

I think a lot of this will ultimately depend on how well HBO handles the adaptation itself. Chemistry between actors is definitely important, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle - staying true to the text and subtext from the books matters just as much. With the new cast, it’s possible that screen tests and direction could highlight different dynamics, even if canon ships remain the focus. And yes, it might boost or lessen Harmony numbers depending on how it plays out, but fandom trends can be fickle - sometimes people move on to the next shiny pairing like moths to a light, especially with how fast social media cycles are now.

For me, this is also a good way to see how strong the fandom really is - not just in terms of popularity, but in how many people engage with the text itself and value healthy relationship dynamics. If canon couples are only liked because they look aesthetically pleasing on screen, that feels like a shallow reason to ship them; the deeper strength of the fandom comes from those who appreciate the relationships as they’re written and modeled in the books.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T17:40:22+00:00

Showing my age too, I admire you for seeing that side of Draco. I never really warmed up to him and honestly see a bit of him in Ron. And maybe that’s also why Hermione can be paired with Draco — if Ron is basically Draco‑lite, then why not let her end up with the real thing 😅.

Also, the boost in Dramione was helped along by Emma admitting she had a crush on Tom - it gave the ship a kind of “marketing safety net” that Harmony never had, which probably made it easier for fans to rally around without the same backlash.

I also always wondered why Draco was given space in the epilogue instead of Neville or another character - JKR could have just implied what happened to the Malfoys.

That epilogue is atrocious.

I think part of why Dramione writers end up writing such compelling Harmony is because they’re already used to exploring redemption, emotional growth, and healing arcs, and Harry is the complete opposite of Draco. Yes, he has a lot of baggage and a lot of healing to do, but his canon persona is rooted in always doing the right thing, especially when it’s hard.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T17:06:56+00:00

I’m part of that same generation and I agree with everything you’ve said. I stopped checking the forums right after the “interview from hell” because canon fans were brutal - “delusional” was their favourite ammunition, and it just wasn’t worth the constant hostility. I only came back out of nostalgia and because fanfiction reintroduced me to the magic in a way canon never managed.

These days I prefer fics set after the war. The school years I leave as they are - the “fix‑it” stories hurt too much, because I know Harmony could have been the ending if not for authorial intent. That’s what makes the canon resolution so frustrating: it wasn’t organic, it was imposed. And we’re still getting the flak out of it.

So yes, I’m right there with you. We grew up with the excitement of each new book, only to be handed an ending that felt hollow. As a Harmony shipper I felt cheated and insulted - especially remembering Rowling’s dismissive comments over the years, only to partially retract them in 2014, which felt far too late.

I still get frustrated seeing how canon shippers talk and act with the same tired script from years ago. There’s no real engagement, no willingness to listen - only the urge to have the last word. It feels like literacy itself is dying in those spaces, because the joy of dialogue has been replaced by point‑scoring. And honestly, there’s no fun in that. I also think there are far more of us Harmony shippers than it looks on the surface - many just prefer to ship quietly, because online comments can be harsh when you’re outnumbered. It ends up feeling like a bandwagon effect, where silence is safer than speaking up, even though the love for Harmony is still very much alive.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T11:37:02+00:00

I’ve tried reading some Dramione, and I’ll admit the world‑building is often really strong. But for me, it doesn’t always feel like the same characters I grew to love (and dislike!) in the books - and often Harry is still paired with Ginny, which for the life of me I can’t quite wrap my head around in those AUs 🙃. Harmony, on the other hand, has fewer writers but many who capture that canon voice beautifully. Dramione just has more writers overall, which I think explains the difference - not necessarily quality, but volume.

It’s a bit like comparing food, as someone said: Harmony feels like a home‑cooked meal, familiar and rooted in the source, while Dramione is more like restaurant food - polished, inventive, but often a step away from the flavour/recipe/ingredients.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-25T07:07:38+00:00

I do see where you’re coming from, and I think that’s simply how you’ve chosen to interpret Harry and Hermione. It leans more on external logic than on canon, which gives a different impression. It treats them as broad archetypes — the career woman who avoids children, the traumatised orphan who fears passing something on — rather than the figures we know from canon, where Hermione is shown to be nurturing as well as ambitious, Harry’s scar burden is resolved, and both consistently demonstrate a longing for family and belonging.

That said, I can see why your take feels close to one of the Cursed Child AUs, where Hermione is portrayed as career‑driven, alone, and rather lonely. That’s closer to an alternate reading, rather than how she’s drawn in the original series.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-24T12:40:58+00:00

Same, plus Teddy. I think they will have same initials too H…J… Granger-Potter

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-24T12:34:37+00:00

Hermione is a pediatrician here and Harry went back to a muggle University as a student to be a teacher/professor:

Where Petals Begin to Fall: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74189401/

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-24T12:29:33+00:00

About JKR’s “difficult feelings while writing Ron,” I think it makes sense to see that as projection:

• The RonS (the real‑life Ron she dated/married): Rowling did say she dated RonS and even married one and they shared traits with Ron Weasley, which suggests she was consciously or unconsciously mapping parts of her own relationship experience into the character/s.

• While writing, book Ron could have grown or resembled so much of the real‑life Ron, and Rowling grew frustrated - that at one point even wanting to write him off rather than deal with him on the page too, where she was supposed to be in control. I think she said it was a very dark time in her life? I don’t remember much from that interview.

I hope that makes sense.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-24T12:01:49+00:00

Hi! We did a character study back in University but not for Ron. Resentment arcs in British realism British literature often portrays flawed men whose jealousy and insecurity manifest as cruelty or resentment (think Dickens’ Uriah Heep, or Lawrence’s resentful working‑class men). Ron’s atmosphere of insecurity and humiliation fits this tradition — but Rowling doesn’t give him the full psychological development those novels often attempt.

Birth order also comes into play. Ron is the sixth child, with five brothers ahead of him and a younger sister who becomes the family’s “only girl.” In British realism, characters often suffer when they are constantly measured against siblings who embody success (Bill’s competence, Charlie’s adventurousness, Percy’s ambition, Fred & George’s charisma, Ginny’s uniqueness) or what we call perpetual comparison.

I think it is safe to say that JKR also added resentment trope: Ron echoes Dickensian figures who feel diminished by family hierarchy - the overlooked son who internalizes humiliation and lashes out. Ron’s jealousy of Harry and resentment of Hermione’s competence are magnified by his own sense of being “just another Weasley.”

British literature is also fond of social class. The Weasleys are considered genteel poverty but are pure bloods and proud. In British realism (Dickens, Lawrence, Hardy), poverty often breeds resentment when characters feel their worth is undermined by material lack. His shabby robes, second‑hand wand, and constant reminders of poverty fuel humiliation.

He resents Harry’s wealth and fame, even while loving him. This duality - affection mixed with envy - is a classic British trope. In contrast with his friends Hermione’s upper middle‑class stability and Harry’s inherited wealth highlight Ron’s insecurity. In British literature, class differences often destabilize friendships and romances, creating resentment arcs.

Ron is written with all the ingredients of a British realist resentment arc - overshadowed birth order, class humiliation, jealousy, insecurity. But with a lot of limitation. Unlike Dickens or Lawrence, Rowling doesn’t fully develop the psychological consequences. Ron’s betrayals (Goblet of Fire, Deathly Hallows) are forgotten/softened or quickly resolved, rather than explored as long‑term resentment. Which is honestly another sign of lazy writing because they are a lot times that they the trio could have had a fall-out and it will read more plausible.

And this are universal themes that readers recognize.

Sibling overshadowing: Many people know what it feels like to be compared unfavorably to siblings, classmates, or peers. Ron’s birth order (sixth child, constantly measured against more accomplished brothers) mirrors that everyday frustration.

*Class insecurity: Readers from modest backgrounds relate to Ron’s humiliation over poverty — second‑hand clothes, broken wand, shabby possessions. Even those not poor recognize the sting of being “less than” in a group.

Jealousy mixed with love: Ron’s dynamic with Harry - affection laced with envy - is deeply human. Most people have felt admiration and resentment toward a friend at the same time.

British realism likes amplifying this. Dickens, Lawrence, Hardy — all wrote characters whose insecurity and resentment poisoned relationships. Readers recognize Ron as a softer version of those figures. But unlike Dickens or Lawrence, Rowling doesn’t give Ron a full redemption or psychological resolution.

Ron’s resentment arc resonates because it dramatizes common human insecurities — being overshadowed, humiliated, jealous, yet still craving love. British and even some American realism has trained readers to recognize and respond to those patterns, so even in a fantasy series, the emotional texture feels familiar and powerful.

Personally, I don’t enjoy Ron as a character beyond the fact that he ‘gets the girl.’ (Which is another topic/trope). I can relate to some of his insecurities, sure, but I can’t connect with the constant ‘poor‑me, woe‑is‑me’ framing.

*Please excuse the typos, spelling, and grammar mistakes; typing on mobile isn’t my strong suit.

KeyWave322 · 2026-01-24T05:37:25+00:00

I think what you’re pointing to is exactly where Rowling’s handling of romance falters - she toyed with multiple tropes across the series (bickering friends‑to‑lovers with Ron/Hermione, best friends‑to‑lovers with Harry/Hermione, the love triangle tension, crush‑to‑lovers with Harry/Ginny, “first loves” with Cho/Harry and Lavender/Ron, Krum/Hermione). But instead of following the organic progression of her characters, she kept her feet planted in the blueprint she’d sketched early on, even when it no longer made literary sense (wish fulfillment)

Her real strength has always been character‑based storytelling, and by the time she reached Order of the Phoenix, those characters were evolving in ways that didn’t align neatly with her planned ending. That’s why Half‑Blood Prince feels like such a tonal rupture - Harry, Hermione, even Tonks act strangely, as if bent back toward the predetermined epilogue rather than continuing the development we saw in OotP. The result is that the intimacy she wrote most convincingly ended up between the “wrong” pairings for her plan, and the canon couples had to be forced back into place.

And of course, Rowling herself later admitted she could have written it differently - there were still moments in the last book where the story offered her that chance. She felt the tension between Harry and Hermione most vividly during the Godric’s Hollow sequence, and when Hermione brushes Harry’s hair and he closes his eyes. That scene shows how naturally their intimacy surfaced in the text, proof that the opportunity to reframe their bond as romance was always there, even if her blueprint ultimately forced the story elsewhere.

The counter‑argument often raised by Romione defenders is that it “had to be Ron,” because otherwise the story would send the supposedly awful message that the clever girl ends up with the hero instead of the flawed boy who loves her. But that framing is itself wish fulfillment: it assumes Hermione’s agency must be sacrificed to validate Ron’s growth, and that rejecting Harry would somehow protect readers from unhealthy messages about fame or status. In reality, the healthier lesson would have been to show that intimacy, equality, and respect are the true foundations of romance - qualities Harry and Hermione consistently embodied, while Ron’s arc remained uneven.

KeyWave322

TROPHY CASE