Ron splitting with Harry and Hermione/The Prank and The Choking

[bystardust]

No: HPFGUIDX 38617

--- Elizabeth wrote:
> Susanne also asked if people think Ron will go bad because he's a 
> present-day equivalent of Peter Pettigrew, and therefore _has_ to 
go 
> bad.
> 
> Actually, wouldn't the most accurate parallel for Ron, as a 
potential
> bad guy, be Sirius?  After all, Sirius did inadvertently betray 
James
> and Lily by talking them into using Peter as their Secret-Keeper.  
He
> himself says that he as good as killed them, and when Harry accuses
> him of murdering his parents, he says, "I don't deny it."  He also 
> has established character flaws, as seen in the Prank (which does 
not
> reflect well upon him, whatever his intentions were).  Yet nobody 
> seems to suggest that Sirius wasn't worthy of the other Marauders, 
or 
> that James and Lupin should have been more wary of him.
> 
> So if Sirius, who is unquestionably guilty of an inadvertent 
> betrayal, is not hated, and people don't want to thrust him out of 
> the way, why do people distrust Ron for the mere _possibility_ that 
> he might someday fall into a situation where he inadvertently harms 
> Harry and/or the general side of good?  Why do they harp so much on 
> his character flaws, which so far have not led to anything nearly 
as 
> dangerous as the Prank?

First of all: Hi, Elizabeth! I like this theory a lot. Ron and 
Sirius, now that you say it, match up a lot better than Ron and Peter 
do. In my opinion, Ron and Peter don't match up at all and I don't 
really see how that one got started. I guess it's because both Ron 
and Peter are overshadowed by their friends (you could even say that 
Ron is so disgusted with Peter at the end of PoA because he sees a 
little of himself in the traitor, along with the obvious "you slept 
on my pillow" reason), but that's pretty much as far as similarities 
go, I think. Ron's character is a -lot- stronger than Peter's; while 
Peter lets himself be entirely overshadowed (or so we see from the 
precious little discussion of that time period in the books), Ron is 
only overshadowed in the vaguest sense. If he has an opinion on 
something, he makes himself heard; if he thinks that Harry's in 
trouble for whatever reason, he does everything in his power to 
reverse the situation (examples: warning Harry about supposedly 
dangerous Sirius Black; voicing his bad feelings about the Mirror of 
Erised); he might be arguably pettier than Harry, but that's because 
Harry is truly one of a kind (he has his problems, but he's as close 
to perfect as one can get), so it's not really fair to compare the 
two on that level, or indeed on most levels. What I'm trying to say 
is that I don't really think Ron and Peter are accurate 
parallels...maybe Peter's going bad indicated that he was something 
that didn't really belong and therefore can't be parallelled to 
anyone. Or maybe not.

*   *   *

_The_Prank/Choking_

I'm sure this as been discussed -at length- here (both aspects of 
it), but I wanted to know if anyone had any ideas or comments on the 
connection between these two events: first, the prank that Sirius 
played on Snape; second, Sirius' behavior at the end of PoA in the 
Shrieking Shack (ex: choking Harry). What to they say about Sirius?

Ever since I read PoA, I've been confused about Sirius choking Harry. 
It stood out in my mind and I've never really been able to get rid of 
it. Arguably, Sirius wasn't really in his right mind at the time, 
because he had just come out of Azkaban; but I see too much of a 
connection with The Prank, prior to Sirius' imprisonment, for that to 
be the end of it. Maybe Sirius' tragic flaw is that he gets way too 
emotional about things and lets his emotion impair his judgement. I 
hope Sirius' destiny, though, isn't to always hurt the ones he loves 
through his tragic flaw (or simply because it's his fate). In trying 
to play a prank on Snape (although we don't really know what his 
motives were), Sirius hurt Remus, whether he was thinking about it or 
not. Not only could Remus have been seriously screwed, but Sirius was 
using Remus' weakness (a weakness that Remus no doubt struggles with 
all the time) for some petty joke; and I think, if I remember 
correctly, that the whole reason Sirius played the prank on Snape was 
because he was nosing around in their business, and their business is 
centered around Remus himself (does that make any sense at all? What 
I'm trying to say is that Sirius seems like he's trying to protect 
Remus, but the exact opposite happens). Then later, in Sirius' haste 
to get to Peter, he ends up choking Harry, the person whose parents' 
death he is supposedly avenging. (There are a lot of other examples 
of Sirius' "folly"; these are just the two I'm using.)

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Am I just exhuming something 
that everyone's sick of talking about? Please tell me. :)

--Doldra