Molly, Harry & Ron (WAS: Percy!)

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 35913

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Penny & Bryce <pennylin at s...> wrote:
 > 
If 
> asked to choose absolutely, do I *like* Molly or *dislike* Molly, 
I'd 
> probably have to say that I like her overall.  This is mainly 
because of 
> her interactions with Harry and how *he* feels about her though.  I 
do 
> dislike the way she interacts with her children in some ways.  With 
> Bill, she seems fond but a bit meddlesome; with Charlie ... hmmm, 
no 
> real opinion here; with Percy, she is fond & doting to the point of 
> fairly obvious favoritism; with the Twins, she is definitely bossy, 
> interfering & unappreciative of their strengths & ambitions; with 
Ron, 
> she seems to be largely uninvolved or "absent" (she pays *far* more 
> attention to Harry than to Ron, and someone wrote a really nice 
analysis 
> some point back about how Molly's favoring Harry over her own son 
Ron 
> might cause problems in the Harry/Ron relationship as well as the 
> Molly/Ron relationship before all is said & done); 

I've been meaning to write a post about Molly for awhile now to make 
these same points about her interactions with Harry in comparison to 
Ron and I went through the books cataloging each interaction with 
Molly.  The result (I apologize in advance if this was in the post 
Penny mentions) was that over the 4 books we see significantly more 
interaction between Harry and Molly than with Molly and Ron (the 
count was approximately 15 to 10) and every Harry-Molly interaction 
is positive.  That in itself isn't surprising, perhaps, since the 
books are written from Harry's POV, and Harry's not a member of the 
family but a neglected orphan, so she treats him as an honored 
guest.  I suspect Ron has not appeared concerned about Molly's 
favoring Harry because he is their guest; surely he'd be angry if his 
mother started yelling at his friend like she yells at her own sons.  
But Harry's guest status starts changing toward the end of GoF, as 
Molly and Bill pointedly come to the Third Task as Harry's "family" 
and spend all day with Harry (Ron had an exam in the morning, but 
there is no mention of an afternoon exam, yet Molly spent the 
afternoon with Harry instead of any of her Hogwarts children).  

Molly's interactions with Ron, on the other hand, show an opposite 
trend throughout the books.  She acts very motherly in PS/SS on the 
platform (and in each subsequent book, accounting for 4 of their 10 
interactions) but virtually every other interaction between Molly and 
Ron is some sort of criticism.  Mostly, however, he seems to be 
ignored, even though he's often present when Molly is focusing her 
attention on someone else -- usually Harry or the twins.  In fact, in 
GoF, aside from the usual platform scene, despite a reasonable amount 
of "screen time" together, they interact only twice: first, the 
argument over the dress robes (has Molly really not figured out that 
Ron hates maroon?), and a very brief conversation at lunch on the day 
of the Third Task, where Ron says he made up a couple of goblin 
names, whereupon Molly looked stern, then spent the afternoon with 
Harry and Bill.  I keep thinking that there must be some positive 
interaction between them that we don't see, but I sense that in the 
Weasley family, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, with the result that 
Percy draws attention to himself by his accomplishments, the twins 
draw (negative) attention to themselves through their mischief, and 
Ginny is a natural attention getter as the youngest and only girl.  
Ron is lost in the chaos.  
>
>Penny: I *don't* think Molly is written 100% positively; at least, 
my reactions 
> to her have not always been positive.  

I've been thinking about different characters' "fatal flaws," i.e. 
the character traits that could create serious problems in the war 
against Voldemort.  In my view, one of Molly's worst faults is her 
apparent attraction to famous wizards.  She was a Lockhart groupie, 
is implied to imbibe celebrity gossip in Witch Weekly (which seems a 
cross between People magazine and the National Enquirer), and seems 
to treat Harry with a similar level of adoration.  Nothing could be 
worse for Ron's ability to overcome his insecurities, now that she's 
drawn Harry so much closer into the family fold, than for her to 
continue to ignore Ron while treating Harry like the honored guest 
who is worthy of attention because of who he is rather than his 
accomplishments.  While I do not believe in my heart of hearts that 
Ron will "go bad" Molly's treatment of Harry could certainly drive a 
wedge between them 
that might cause Harry to lack critical support when he needs it. 

> please do *not* write back with 
> "Where do I find that quiz that Penny mentioned" 
> 
I couldn't find the quiz, but I'm not going to ask . . . .

Debbie, who worries about Ron all the time but is strangely confident 
about his future