The Long Road to H/H

[cassandraclaire at mail.com]

*grins* Not really a long road. Like Ebony, I'm one of those people 
who tends to pair up characters mentally. I read through Books 1-3 at 
breakneck speed, without stopping, over a 3 day period. Then, 
realizing with a great wail of misery that it would be months before 
Book 4, started reading them again. And I discovered that I was 
getting a special kick out of certain Harry/Hermione moments -- when 
she embraces him in Book 1, all the Time-Turner business in Book 3. 
It wasn't a solid theory, just an inkling/feeling that they would be 
a cute couple. (I still love the cover of PoA, with both of them on 
Buckbeak.) 

When I read GoF I was mildly dismayed, like Ebony, by the Ron-likes-
Hermione business. My first thought was, "Poor old Ron, JKR is 
setting him up for heartbreak." I just saw no evidence whatsoever 
that Hermione liked him back. I still saw her main focus to be Harry, 
her main attention to be on Harry, and loved the bits at the First 
Task when Hermione runs into the tent and tells Harry he was amazing, 
he really was (maybe it's partly the emphasis Jim Dale gives it in 
the audio version, but I remember listening to it with my boyfriend, 
who turned to me at that point and said, "Oh, she SO wants him.") 
<vbeg> Of course I also liked the bit at the second task where she's 
busy cheering for Harry and ignores Krum, and hey, the Kiss at the 
end of the book. I'm not going to get embroiled in Whether It Means 
Anything, but *I* got a kick out of it.

I had never at this point read any fanfic whatsoever or heard of 
HP4GU or even of egroups. Didn't know they existed. Started writing 
Draco Dormiens for fun, and it just never remotely occured to me (I 
knew I wanted it to be a love triangle) to bring in Ron as a point of 
the triangle. I don't really like Ron that much in canon, like Penny, 
and so of course I don't want my favorite character paired up with 
him, but it went beyond that. I don't care for the spatty, bickering 
nature of R and H's canon relationship, and I just couldn't for the 
life of me figure out how to write them into a romantic relationship. 
There was no way for me to get a handle on it; it just seemed weird 
and unrealistic. It wasn't until after I finished DD that I heard of 
PoU and HP4GU so I can pretty confidently say that I'm H/H from 
canon, purely, and while I enjoy all the well-written H/H fanfic out 
there, it didn't convert me. If fanfic converted me to anything, it 
was the possibility of Hermione/Draco. Which I still like way better 
than R/H. <g>

Cassie