Is Ginny's Sudden Personality Change Believeable?

[severusbook4]

No: HPFGUIDX 76105

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Buttercup <cathio2002 at y...> 
wrote:
> <snip> I'm wondering if Ginny's 180 degree personality change
> is plausible. She goes from being pretty much unnoticeable to
> being almost a female version of Harry. In reality, which I know
> fiction is not, it takes time for humans to change parts of their
> personality they want to improve. And the transformation is  
> usually gradual and may take years. I think it would be quite hard 
> for a timid person to all of a sudden be brassy. 
>

Buttercup,
     You have to remember she is the younger sister of six big 
brothers, so she would probably be very outspoken and an intense 
tomboy since she was probably picked on somewhat as she grew up, and 
she has been at Hogwarts for 3 years. Plenty of time to change and 
grow up some. In my own opinion, I think she was always like this, 
she was only timid around Harry because she is, or was, quite 
smitten with him, and that was the only time we saw her interact 
with people, is with Harry and co..  She speaks to him now because 
she has gotten to know him and realized he is a real person and not 
the super being she had imagined him to be (like so many people 
idolize movie stars).  Also since she has had passing boyfriends 
(normal for my 14 year old) she is much more secure around the 
object of her affection (Harry could learn from her, he was quite an 
idiot around Cho, tongue tied and panicy <sp?>).

Severus

    
> <snip> She switches boyfriends a little too quickly for a girl of 
> only fourteen years. One second it's Michael Corner, then Dean
> Thomas, Cho seems to do the same, floating from boy to boy). By 
> the time Harry and she get together, she'll have dated every
> available boy at Hogwarts. They're too young for this. 
 

As I stated above it seems very normal for a 14 year old to do this, 
affections are very fickle at this age, and it is not as if they are 
being sexually intimate (holding hands and a little mugging is about 
it) so switching boyfriends every 2 weeks is just fine and normal in 
my opinion.  It takes quite a while to find the one who you want to 
be with for the duration, and I think Ginny still has a severe soft 
spot in her heart for Harry, as seen in the last few pages of OotP 
when, as she was curled up on the foot of Hermiones hospital bed, 
she giggles and hides her face in the covers after Harry speaks to 
her.
 

Severus