What Harry will miss the most

[lupinesque]

No: HPFGUIDX 38747

Catherine...

> wanted to 
> make a really annoying, nitpicky, LOON-y point.
> 
> According to canon, Ron is *not* the one thing that Harry will miss 
> the most.  The line in the song is:
> 
> "We've taken what you'll sorely miss," not, what he would miss the 
> most.  The "miss most" line came from Dobby, who heard this second 
> hand:
> 
> "The thing Harry Potter will miss most, sir!"

To be even more annoying and nitpicky, that information does not come 
only from Dobby.  The school at large and/or the narrative voice also 
interprets the hostage as the thing the Champion will miss most:

"People had been teasing her so much about being the thing that Viktor 
Krum would most miss that she was in a rather tetchy mood."  (GF 21)

But that isn't the line that makes me think JKR sets Hermione slightly 
below Ron in best-friend ranking.  We can always reason that Krum 
needed a hostage so Harry's had to be Ron.  Nor am I particularly 
concerned with the line about a lot more laughter and a lot less 
studying--sure, that's just where Harry is right now, very much in 
need of a laugh, so it isn't clear that forced to choose, he'd say Ron 
is his very best friend.  I might even be able to dismiss Harry's ease 
with being on no speaking terms with Hermione in PA (for 5 
weeks, *twice as long* as he is with Ron the next year) as just 
reflecting the different dynamics of the instigating fight--he closed 
the door on Hermione, which might be less upsetting to him than Ron's 
refusing to believe him, hence the difference in his responses to the 
two fallings-out.

No, what made me want to scream like Penny (because (a) I identify 
strongly with Hermione and (b) I want to see the Trio as a perfectly 
balanced friendship) was the exact phrasing of that line:

"There was much less laughter, and a lot more hanging around in the 
library when Hermione was your best friend."

What a peculiar way to put it:  "...when Hermione was your best 
friend."  If you were talking about two best friends, perfectly equal, 
and now one of them is currently NOT a best friend, is this how you 
would phrase it?  Wouldn't you say "...now that Hermione was his 
only best friend"?  Or "...when you were spending time with Hermione"? 
 The way she phrases it sets up a time when *someone else* was his 
best friend. 

It's upsetting, and it's out of keeping with various references to his 
"two best friends" and the apparent equity between them in most 
places, but it is the way I heard that line when I first read it and 
on every reading since.  I can only hope it's just a swing of the 
friendship pendulum (after all, even the most perfectly balanced trio 
of friends constantly loses and regains equilibrium as two get closer, 
two more distant, two fight, two make up, etc.).

Amy Z