SHIP: R/H: Muddying the pool

[jenbe_me]

No: HPFGUIDX 31350

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "davewitley" <dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
> 

  (and I would snip here if I could, but believe it all to be quite 
relevant to what I am going to discuss)


> I want to add a rather more controversial suggestion.  I have been 
re-
> reading COS and POA to my son, and have noticed that Hermione 
appears 
> to assume an unconscious ownership of Ron and, to a lesser extent, 
of 
> Harry.
> 
> It's mostly in little, passing comments about homework and minor 
> infringements of rules.  She moves from the Hermione of PS who 
> vocally and impartially upholds the rules for all people, to 
someone 
> who concentrates on her friends.  But the next step is that Harry 
> glides out of her range - I think (I confess I am not at all sure) 
> she realises that when he has decided something she has little 
> influence.  Whereas Ron is in some indefinable sense caught.  He 
> never wavers in standing against her exhortations - but the fact 
that 
> she continues them gets under his skin, I think.  He has to answer 
> back, instead of doing what Harry does and ignoring her and doing 
> what he was going to anyway.  I think the effect on Hermione is 
that 
> she starts to do this less with Harry, and concentrates on Ron.
> 
> The controversial bit is that I wonder if Hermione bears some 
> responsibility for this.  She subtly asserts ownership of him, as I 
> say possibly not fully aware of what she is doing.  He signals back 
> that he objects not to the idea of being told what to do, but the 
> content.
> 
> Seen in this light, a major bust-up in GOF is inevitable.  But it 
> does not mean that Ron's unfair treatment of her over the ball is 
out 
> of the blue.  They have been developing a shared assumption of 
> exclusivity (with, admittedly, Harry's position in the relationship 
> very undefined - to a degree they battle to be the one he listens 
> to), so when she accepts Krum's invitation to the ball, Ron can see 
> it as the violation of a tacit, even subliminal, agreement.  No 
> wonder the lad can't find a legitimate expression of his plaint, 
and 
> switches from one lame accusation to another.


  Well said here, David.  I agree with you totally. I have been 
picking up on this kind of relationship between Ron/Hermione as well, 
and my husband, when in the middle of reading the books, amazed me 
when he said, while reading PS/SS, (when reaching a part where Ron 
and Hermione got into a brief tiff about nothing) "they're arguing 
like they're already married." At that point I stared at him in 
amazement because I had already finished GoF and was certain of more 
tensions between R/H, whereas he was only beginning the series. I 
didn't discuss it with him as I didn't want to spoil anything for him 
later on in the books, but I almost said, "you sure picked up on that 
early!"

  My husband and I are a *lot* like Ron and Hermione ourselves, in 
that we have a romantic relationship built completely up from a 
friendship in which I am the intelligent, brainy, always reading, 
rules abiding one... and whereas he's the jokester, one of a 
lighthearted disposition. And I boss him around quite a bit which 
never fails to irritate him, yet he stands for it. 

  To someone who is in a relationship like the one Ron and Hermione 
seem to be developing, it is quite clear that all the irritation 
they're building up is just a form of courtship in a way... maybe a 
bit of foreplay?

 Irritation and arguing and all that stuff is, in a way, a heated 
exercise that really can turn you on in a bizarre way. Ron and 
Hermione may just be on the verge of discovering that.

jenbea