[HPforGrownups] Re: The Ginny Weasley Quotient (some SHIP)

[Moonstruck]

No: HPFGUIDX 44995

Pippin said:

<<<<<<<<You know, I think that scene  in the Common
Room could be the first time that Ginny realizes that
Harry isn't The Boy Who Lived but rather a young man
who's just as wretched with this whole boy-girl
business as she is. That could be a turning point for
her...we don't  see her blushing and 
giggling over Harry after that, do we?>>>>>>>>

Penny said:

<<<<<No, we don't see her giggling over Harry after
that.  We don't see her at all after that.  (snip)
[W]e certainly don't see anything noteworthy of Ginny
after the Yule Ball, that's for sure.  :--)>>>>>

Me:

I'm not sure Ginny's lack of giggles and blushing
necessarily indicates increased maturity or growing
sophistication in her dealings with Harry. On the
contrary, I would think Ginny's reaction to Harry's
last-minute need for a Yule Ball date to be a just as
troublesome and over-reactive. Granted, she has a
terrible crush on Harry and she wishes Harry would
notice her as something more than "Ron's Little
Sister." I think we've all been there in one way or
another and it's no fun. Little things make you twinge
and feel discouraged. 

Nonetheless, it seems to me than anyone with a
developed sense of reality and maturity and a genuine
concern for Harry *as a unique individual, not a hero*
would have had the sensibilities to take a more
thoughtful and less self-absorbed view of Harry's
dilemma. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from a
thirteen year old experiencing her first crush, but
there are gaping holes of logic and sensibility in her

seeming devastation that Harry needs a date to the
Yule Ball and she's all ready taken.

Ginny's baselessly assuming that Harry would have
asked her to the ball if she wasn't all ready going
with Neville. I could understand her having a little
disappointment that she were "out of the running," so
to speak, if there were even the slimest chance. But
what reason does she have to actually believe Harry
would've even considered her? 

He doesn't really have any kind of friendship with
her, outside of the fact that she's Ron's sister. He
has consistently and from their first meeting either
ignored, been embarrassed by, or shrugged off all of
the glaring indications that she fancies him. She
doesn't even seem to move in the same orbit with
Harry. Sure, she's a year younger than Harry, so he's
less likely to be around her, but we see more of the
Creevey brothers than we do of her. 

She's essentially a non-entity in Harry's life. How is
it, then, that anyone with the tiniest shred of logic
would actually assume that the likelihood of Harry
asking her were great enough that she should get so
obviously bent out of shape and go hide in her room? I
don't think it's too much to expect of Ginny that,
despite her feelings for Harry, she be able to
acknowledge the reality of the situation and react
like a reasonable human being.

Instead, she's thrown into a misery so great that she
immediately loses the ability to carry on a
conversation with Ron and Harry or even be in Harry
presence. I just think her emotional intensity is
neither reasonable nor mature given her lack of
evidence that he would consider asking her.

And her reaction strikes me as just as childish as the
giggling and blushing.

The problem with Ginny, in my mind, is that she's
guilty of the behavior so many exhibit around Harry
and that he abhors. She doesn't know Harry. Her
interest in Harry is not for the qualities that
*really* make him Harry Potter, but for the mythic,
heroic persona that the WW has thrust upon him. To
her, he's an idea, not an actual person. Sure she's
only 13, but Ron and Hermione, at 11, knew of Harry's
reputation and still managed to forge layered, complex

relationships with him as an individual. They weren't
so terribly blinded by his celebrity that they
couldn't see past it to the real person.

If Ginny *did* have any genuine concern for Harry, she
would she would have acknowledged, based on a
three-dimentional, fleshed out, unselfish
understanding of Harry, the unlikelihood of Harry
asking her to the ball. She would be surely be a bit
disappointed, but be able to put a realistic spin on
the situation. In being so wrapped up in the
superficiality of Harry's public image, she negates
his voice, his very existence as an individual. She
either ignores or dismisses Harry's uncomfortable and
uninterested pattern of behavior toward her because
she wrapped up in this dream vision of him as her
knight in shining armor. She disrespects his need to
be understood, beyond The Boy Who Lived hysteria, as a
*living boy*.

I don't assume that any of these behaviors are
intentional on Ginny's part. She's not a bad kid. I
don't think she has the self-awareness to understand
to shallowness of her emotions for Harry. In other
words, if she's *ever* going to be the girl for Harry,
she's got a lot of growing to do.

-Jessica 



=====
"Oh, I'll settle down with some old story/About a boy who's just like me/Thought there was love in everything and everyone/You're so naive!/After a while they always get it/They always reach a sorry end/Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then/With a winning smile, the boy/With naivety succeeds/At the final moment, I cried/I always cry at endings"
- "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying," Belle and Sebastian

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