The Ginny Weasley Quotient

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 44801

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Judy M. Ellis" <penumbra10 at y...> 
wrote:
>
>      What bothers me about Ginny is her nearly total self-
> absorbsion.  It is natural for young adolescents to strongly 
focus  on themselves, but Ginny's is unnatural. When she is not 
being self- absorbed, she is obscessing over Harry. JKR uses 
Tom Riddle's  ranting soliloquy on how he managed to escape 
the diary to reveal nformation about Ginny Harry could not 
possibly have otherwise been 
> privy to:  
> 
> "Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling 
me  all her pitiful woes--how her brothers tease her, how she 
had to come to school in secondhand robes and how" -- 
Riddle's eyes 
> glinted -- "how she didn't think the famous, good, great Harry 
> Potter would ever like her..."  Cos Ch. 7.  Riddle also talks 
about  her pouring out her deepest fears and her darkest secrets 
--her 
> soul, which caused Riddle to grow stronger.
> 
> These sound like the normal things that would trouble an 
11-year-old  except for 'deepest fears'and 'darkest secrets.'  
 don't know about  anyone else, but my "darkest secrets" at age 
11 were I liked a boy  who sat two seats over and I'd started my 
cycle.  Even taking into  consideration that Voldemort is the King 
of Melodrama, that  statement seems strange.<<

But as you say, Riddle's the King of Melodrama and he's a 
master manipulator too. I don't suppose Ginny's secrets were 
any deeper or darker than yours, or mine...but it would have been 
very easy to make *me* believe, at age eleven or even older, that 
the  perfectly normal but very new and unfamiliar adolescent 
feelings I was having were something to be ashamed of. 

 And even Harry at age fourteen is so self-conscious that he 
dreads anyone finding out how he feels about Cho, and thinks it 
would sound melodramatic to tell Ron that someone is trying to 
kill him. (That's often overlooked, BTW. Harry *did* lie to Ron.)


>> Then consider her rescue:  We know that 
 Harry was very dirty and covered in blood as well because JKR 
says  so.  Harry runs over to her and attempts to revive her.  She 
is  disoriented at first then tries to explain what had happened to 
her.  She asks how he managed to kill the Basilisk, then cries 
about the  possibility of being expelled, but she never once asks 
if he is hurt or manages a stammering thank you, even after she 
is safe with her  parents and absolved. Don't you find that the 
least bit odd? <<

Not really. How do you thank someone for something like that? 
Especially at age eleven. I don't recall that Hermione ever 
thanked the boys for saving her from the Troll, or that Harry ever 
thanked Snape or Hermione for saving him from Quirrell's curse 
or Hagrid for rescuing him from the Dursleys or Dumbledore for 
saving him from Voldemort in the end. 

If she is the chatterbox Ron says 
> she is, and brave enough to be sorted into Gryffindor, why not 
> stammer, stumble and mumble her way through asking Harry 
to take her  to the Yule Ball as Harry did Cho and Ron did Fleur? 


Because she was a third year. She couldn't invite *anyone* to the 
ball. It'd be pretty pushy to ask Harry or anyone else to invite her 
to a function she wouldn't otherwise be entitled to attend.

 Pippin