Shipping wars, Harry's past in H/R/H dynamics, fanfic

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 31369

Ahh, the hoary old H/H vs R/H chestnut rolls out for another airing.  Interesting comments from David about Hermione's 'ownership' of Ron, and usual exchange of fire between the two cruiseliners.  I still haven't got my PS/SS back, but I do have some thoughts on the subject (for the record, I haven't boarded either of the two ships, I just paddle around on my LOLLIPOPS lifeboat and squint up at the glowering crews now and then...)

Here are my thoughts.

Harry's past has a lot of repercussions which overflow into his relationships with his two best friends.  His dispatch of Voldemort has made him both a famous figure in the Wizarding World and Voldemort's number one target as he struggles to regain power.  His treatment at the hands of the Dursleys has made him reserved, wary and intensely private, and given him a depth and maturity which is unusual in a boy his age.  At 11, when children start at Hogwarts, the landmarks in most of their lives are child-sized - nasty teachers, bullies, exams, homework, pets, interhouse rivalry, squabbles with parents, friends and siblings.  Compare these with the landmarks in Harry's world - orphandom, murder, worldwide fame, persecution, threats to his life, abuse.  Harry has had to face a lot of very serious issues in his short life, and these have left their mark on him.

Although on one level Hermione and Ron are his best buddies, and play around with him and talk to him as if he were any other child their own age, on another they know that Harry's life experiences are very serious indeed, and every now and then the implications of this hit home to them in a way which frightens and awes them.  Remember Harry's explosion at the end of SS/PS when he reminds them that there is a whole other scale of terrible things beyond the bounds of Hogwarts, that Gryffindor winning the House Cup won't mean a toss if Voldemort comes back??  Compare Hermione's worst fears being failing her exams, or being expelled, and Ron's deepest desire being to become Head Boy and Quidditch captain with Harry fighting an evil overlord for his life and trying to come to terms with the murder of his parents and the possibility that this happened because his father's best friend betrayed them!  Hermione and Ron are children, living in a child-sized world, Harry is facing issues many adults have never had to deal with.

What I see in the Trio is that Hermione and Ron instinctively treat Harry a lot more reverently than they treat each other, because of this.  Hermione and Ron share an inner security and even innocence of which Harry has been deprived, and slowly, as the books progress and more and more terrible things happen to him, they become more and more conscious of this. When they bicker with each other, it's usually about pretty trivial things: homework, the Ball, pets: their interactions with Harry have a lot more seriousness.  They care for him and are as loyal and supportive as they can be, but they know that they are out of their depth with the things he is going through, which is why Dumbledore has to step in at the end of the books to provide Harry with support: he has the experience and wisdom to give Harry what he needs.

Notice how Harry doesn't usually get involved when Hermione and Ron are wrangling?  He doesn't join in deriding SPEW, he avoids confrontation with Hermione over sneaking to Hogsmeade, he believes Crookshanks is guilty but does not address this with Hermione, he doesn't say anything when they're fighting after the Ball.  He is, more than Ron, an independent observer who makes his own decisions and lets other people make theirs.  The fight between Harry and Ron in GoF is especially revealing... Hermione knows, consciously or unconsciously, that Ron will weather the fight better than Harry, because he does not have Harry's history of rejection and isolation. Harry, on the other hand, has few or no other emotional ties to fall back on, and is quietly very dependent on Ron's friendship, making the fight far more painful and distressing: Hermione, who has known social rejection herself, takes it upon herself to look after Harry rather than Ron.  She's quite a bit wiser and more perceptive than Ron, even at 11, when she already sees that the courage and loyalty Harry has needed are, in the grand scheme of things, far more significant than her own academic dedication.

As for how these musings reflect on the two ships, I'll leave that to you.  I'd go for Harry, myself (and I do identify with Hermione), but then, I tend to go for the tortured souls with lives full of strife and complication.  Ron might, in fact, be a better bet in the long run - a more stable (if jealousy-prone) sense of self, wholesome and good-hearted.

On another thread, all this interesting speculation about fanfic has made me think about my anguished declaration that my Snape bio *wasn't* fanfic... I think this probably says something about the way I personally define the stuff!  In fact, the more I think about this, the foggier my definition seems to get.  Let me see.

What I did with the Snape bio was colouring in the jigsaw, rather than drawing a new picture.  I pieced together all I could about Snape's past from the books, and then presented a history which explained all known facts and filled in the gaps to make it all fit together and demonstrate how Snape/Lily might have accounted for them.  I wasn't thinking in terms of 'what if x happened?' at all, I was thinking in terms of "X has happened - what might have led to it?"

Of course, there's no definitive rule saying that "colouring in the jigsaw" isn't fanfic, it's just where I've drawn the line, probably because of the way I thought about what I was writing.  If I'd been writing fanfic, not "speculation in narrative form", I'd have used storywriting style (i.e. less academic, more reader-friendly), I'd probably have put in dialogue, new ideas, an actual original story, and so on.  In my bio, the creative part was in shaping the story to fit known facts, rather than using known facts to create a new story.

Erm.   (?)

I do like this image of Snape as Heathcliff, I must say.  Dark, pale, brooding, anguished... I can just see him hurling himself onto the heather in Godric's Moor crying LILY!  LILY!

Tabouli.


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