Harry and Hermione (and Ron)

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C2694
From: catlady_de_los_angeles
Subject: Re: Harry and Hermione (and Ron)
Reply To: [Yahoo! #2661] Re: Harry and Hermione
Date: 6/23/00 3:13 pm  (ET)

> I do agree with the point about not being old
> enough. [snip] I cannot think of any of my
> friends who were in 'couples' at 17 that are
> still together.

In the Muggle world: My goddaughter's parents met in high school (before
I met them), they couldn't have been more than 16 when they got together
-- they married at 19 (would have waited longer but my goddaughter was
on the way) -- they've still together, with 10 year old daughter and 6
year old twin boys.

In the wizard world: it seems to be me that wizard folk marry and have
children awfully young -- James and Lily seem to me to have been awfully
young to have Harry.

Maybe wizard folk just grow up fast (and then age slowly and live to an
average age of 100 instead of Muggle 75): the HP e-mail-lists have led
me to some transcipts of JKR interviews, in one of which she says it
just seemed to her that 17 was a good age for wizards to come of age,
and maybe she meant 'be grown-up' not just 'have legal rights'.

And in another transcript she said firmly "There is no University for
wizards". That shocked and horrified me (I digress) because Wizards *must*
have university: after all, wizard (wyz - ard) *means* "wise person". They
wouldn't need the modern kind of university, a mass-production factory
that uses assembly-line methods to put its goals: 1) turning 18 year
olds into 21 year olds, 2) issuing the Bachelor's Degrees that are
one's ticket in the lottery for a good job, 3) separating winners
(who get top grades at top colleges and/or make friends with lots of
offspring of important people and lots of people who will be important
themselves someday) from losers, 4) training people in job skills, 5)
injecting certain standardized knowledge into each person, which will be
forgotten over the course of adult life. They need universities in the
traditional sense, where people who love scholarship more than wealth
study and learn together even if they have to live in a a garret.

> I have read PoU as well and the H&H romance
> works well there but it works well only because
> of the very important detail of Ron being dead.
> I see it as more likely that Ron and Hermione
> would get together long term.

It is not impossible that Harry and Ron will get married and Hermione
will be the maid of honor.... It is not impossible that all three will
join in a triad marriage -- I have known threesomes that lasted much
longer than many twosomes I've known.

I have a suspicion that the reason that JKR is so *certain* that she
won't write any book about what happens to Harry after Hogwart's is that
she plans for him to die in the seventh book. Die fighting Voldemort. It
is a very dramatic fight and it is a metaphysical necessity that Harry
has to die in order to kill Voldemort (because Dumbledore said that
Voldemort can't really die because he isn't really alive, so Harry has
to give him life in order to kill him). DON'T CRY! Maybe JKR can make
it a heartwarming happy ending: I only saw one episode of The Charmed,
but it was the episode in which the sisters gave a Chinese-American
ghost and enable his mother to give him a proper funeral, at which the
ghost happily runs off to join his late father and the two fade into the
spirit world together. We could have a vision of Harry being re-united
with James and Lily -- if (god forbid!) Sirius and Remus had died in
the meantime, all five could be together.