Anatomy of a Rift (Part 2 of 2) LONG

[dicentra63 <dicentra@xmission.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52039

This message is a continuation of 52038

***********************

And so Harry's name comes out of the Goblet, inexplicably. Right out
of the blue. Harry is of course stunned, but so is Ron, along with
everyone else. 

     "I didn't put my name in," Harry said, blankly. "You know I didn't."

     [Ron and Hermione] stared back just as blankly.

What is Ron supposed to think at this point? How could Harry's name
come out of the Goblet unless Harry put it there? Ron must have gone
back over the events leading up to that moment, just as we have, to
try to make sense of it all. He might not have noticed Harry's lack of
enthusiasm, but he does know that Harry never proposed a plan for
fooling the Goblet. Not to him, anyway. Not the way the twins and Lee
did. The only conclusion that makes sense to him is that Harry was
planning to go for it all along, and he deliberately cut Ron out of
his plans.

Suddenly, Harry must have seemed like a very different person to Ron.
Harry had *never* left Ron out of *anything* before. Mugre y uñas,
remember? And yet the "evidence" that Harry ditched Ron this time is
right there in his face. Is Ron feeling *jealous* of Harry because
"everything happens to him"? I doubt it. Instead, he has to be feeling
deeply betrayed. And given what he and Harry have been through
together, that's gotta be a serious knife twist to the heart.

Ron's also gotta be wondering why. Why would Harry do such a thing? As
he casts about for an explanation, only one seems to make sense:
Draco's been right all along; Harry really does seek the spotlight.
The proof's right under his nose. And the events that follow seem to
bear that out.

**********************

I have to acknowledge at this point that I'm not the first person to
see The Rift as the result not of jealousy but of feelings of
betrayal. I came to the conclusion on my own, but then my research
turned up a similar proposal from August 2002, by b_boy (aka Steve):

     "In message #42739 I suggested that Ron's emotions surrounding
Harry's name coming out of the Goblet of Fire were not about Harry
getting the glory one more time, they were instead about betrayal of
friendship....[t]he question isn't whether Ron is jealous in general,
because we all know that he is. He is jealous of lots of people in
lots of ways. The question is, is the emotional pain he obviously
feels when Harry name comes out of the Goblet of Fire rooted in
betrayal or jealousy?" --43801

Again, b_boy assumes that Ron does have jealousy problems in general,
but not in this particular instance. He goes on to demonstrate his
case using examples from the book. (I'm going to use many of those
same examples.) He then asks the opinion of listies: jealousy or
betrayal? Some say jealousy, some say betrayal, others say both, and
the thread, unfortunately, only ends up being maybe 10 posts long. 

So b_boy, please know that I'm not claiming the right of discovery. I
got here on my own, but I see where you planted your flag. And it's
possible that there are other flags, I just didn't see them because
they were planted before August 2001. (If anyone knows of them, let me
know). And apparently no one else saw them because Ron's jealousy is
*canon* around here, not a topic of debate. :D

*********************

Back to business. Let's examine exactly what happens. Harry comes back
to find the Gryffindor common room in an uproar. Everyone is
celebrating, and no one wants to hear him say he didn't enter. He's
trying to push his way through the crowd but can't. Lee Jordan ties a
Gryffindor banner around him. It takes him about a half-hour to get to
the stairs. He gets into his room and finds Ron lying on the bed,
still fully dressed.

     "Where've you been?" Harry said.

     "Oh, hello." said Ron.

He was grinning, but it was a very odd, strained sort of grin. Harry
suddenly became aware that he was still wearing the scarlet Gryffindor
banner that Lee had tied around him. He hastened to take it off, but
it was knotted very tightly. Ron lay on the bed without moving,
watching Harry struggle to remove it.

     "So," he said, when Harry had finally removed the banner and
thrown it into a corner. "Congratulations."

     "What d'you mean, congratulations?" said Harry, staring at Ron.
There was definitely something wrong with the way Ron was smiling: It
was more like a grimace.

     "Well ... no one else got across the Age Line," said Ron. "Not
even Fred and George. What did you use -- the Invisibility Cloak?"

     "The Invisibility Cloak wouldn't have got me over that line,"
said Harry slowly.

     "Oh right," said Ron. "I thought you might've told me if it was
the cloak ... because it would've covered both of us, wouldn't it? But
you found another way, did you?"

Freeze picture. Here we see Ron, who refused to participate in the
festivities, but who "knew" that Harry had been part of it because he
had that banner tied around him. He might have even been aware of when
Harry came through the portrait hole by the way the crowd reacted, so
he might have known how long Harry was down there. This would confirm
his suspicion that Harry really does crave the spotlight.

What Ron says is telling, too. He remarks on Harry's apparent secret
plans for getting his name in the Goblet and how he'd left Ron out of
them. But Harry doesn't catch on to this subtlety; he only knows that
Ron is calling him a liar. Resume action:

     "Listen," said Harry, "I didn't put my name in that goblet.
Someone else must've done it."

     Ron raised his eyebrows. "What would they do that for?"

     "I dunno," said Harry. He felt it would sound very melodramatic
to say, "To kill me."

     Ron's eyebrows rose so high that hey were in danger of
disappearing into his hair.

     "It's okay, you know, you can tell *me* the truth," he said. "If
you don't want everyone else to know, fine, but I don't know why
you're bothering to lie, you didn't get into trouble for it, did you?
That friend of the Fat Lady's, that Violet, she's already told us all
Dumbledore's letting you enter. A thousand Galleons prize money, eh?
And you don't have to do end-of-year tests either...."

Freeze. So not only did Harry leave him out, he's still leaving him
out. He won't at least share with Ron how he did it. And as for the
prize money, Harry didn't exactly offer to split it with Ron, either,
the way the twins and Lee had agreed. So Harry's not in it just for
the fame -- he's also in it for the money. Resume:

     "I didn't put my name in that goblet!" said Harry, starting to
feel angry.

     "Yeah, okay," said Ron, in exactly the same skeptical tone as
Cedric. "Only you said this morning you'd have done it last night, and
no one would've seen you.... I'm not stupid you know."

     "You're doing a really good impression of it," Harry snapped.

     "Yeah?" said Ron, and there was no trace of a grin, forced or
otherwise, on his face now. "You want to get to bed, Harry. I expect
you'll need to be up early tomorrow for a photo-call or something."

He wrenched the hangings shut around his four-poster, leaving Harry
standing there by the door ....

And there's the accusation of being a fame-hound -- Ron's parting
shot. On this remark hang most of the Jealous!Ron theories. But I
don't think that Ron is revealing jealousy here; I think he's going
for the jugular. Harry has hurt him tremendously, he believes, and
when Ron hints around at why he's feeling hurt, Harry doesn't catch
on. That must have meant to Ron that Harry really had betrayed him and
didn't care how he felt. Harry's anger didn't help either: instead of
asking what Ron's problem was, he just reacted to being called a liar.
Understandable, sure, but it was still gasoline on the fire. Ron's
accusation of seeking the spotlight was therefore meant to hurt Harry
back *and* it was meant to let Harry know that Ron was on to him and
he wasn't impressed in the least.

If, as Ron had hoped, he and Harry had put their heads together,
figured out a way past the Age Line, and put their names in the
goblet, and the goblet *still* spat out Harry's name, do you think Ron
would have been upset about it? If past actions are any indication, no
he wouldn't. He'd be cheering Harry on, hoping he'd win that bag of
Galleons they would have agreed to split. 

No, Ron isn't jealous, he's hurt. He's deeply, deeply hurt.

******************

Because we see the scene from Harry's point of view, it's easy to see
Ron as the jerk and Harry as the victim, but we have to be careful
when assigning Ron his motives based on what Harry thinks. Or on what
Hermione thinks for that matter.

Let's go back to Hermione for a minute.

The sequence of events the next morning are that Ron goes down to
breakfast before Harry wakes up and so does Hermione. She has a
conversation with Ron. She might have asked him where Harry was. We
don't know exactly what Ron said, but I'll bet the farm he didn't say
"I'm not speaking to Harry because he hurt my ickle feelings." As
b_boy observed, 

     "The wound, the pain, in my opinion, were all inflicted by his
perceived betrayal, but Ron isn't going to talk about his deep
emotional wound, so externally it is expressed as statements of
jealously and anger." --43919

No, Ron's not going to articulate his hurt in so many words, is he?
But I wouldn't put it past him to say something like, "Harry's
upstairs getting his beauty rest. Gotta look good for all those
photos, you know" or "I wouldn't know; champions don't interact with
low-lifes like me." In a bitter tone of voice, of course. What choice
did she have but to interpret his remarks as evidence of jealousy? How
Hermione responded to Ron is unknown, but it appears that he made it
clear to her that he wasn't kidding about Harry not being his friend
anymore. 

Hence her interception of Harry at the portrait hole and their walk
around the lake. She's trying to prevent a blow-out between the two,
but look at what actually happens. When Harry woke up, "He sat up and
ripped back the curtains of his own four-poster, intending to talk to
Ron, to force Ron to believe him -- only to find that Ron's bed was
empty..."

Harry isn't mad at Ron at this point; he's just hoping to clear the
air. But when Hermione tells him that Ron is jealous, Harry hits the
roof. 

     "I'm not running around after him trying to make him grow up!"
Harry said...

Yeah. Pippin noticed it too:

     "I don't know that Hermione helped any by sticking her oar into
the Ron/Harry dispute. If she hadn't given Harry a handy explanation
for Ron's behavior, he might have been motivated to find out
first-hand what was on Ron's mind and they could've settled their
differences a lot sooner." --39252

Poor Hermione, bless her heart. She really does try to help. But this
time she made things worse by jumping to conclusions and then sharing
them with Harry. It's evident from Harry's reaction that *he* didn't
read jealousy into Ron's reaction, but because Hermione is so often
right, and because she'd just spoken to him, Harry believes her. 

And it really ticks him off. How dare Ron be jealous of him? Ron
*knows* that Harry derives no enjoyment from his accidental fame.
Suddenly, Ron must seem like a very different person to Harry, too.
Jealous? All this time? How stupid is that? Harry's disgust over Ron's
apparent childishness prevents him from wanting to deal with the
situation directly.

And so we have The Rift. Ron won't talk to Harry, Harry won't talk to
Ron, and Hermione's in the middle, making polite conversation.

***************

Oh please. You still think that jealousy is an element in The Rift. 

Well then, let's compare Ron's comportment during The Rift to a time
when we *know* he was jealous: the infamous "Yule Brawl." 

I'm not going to go over Ron's behavior point-by-point -- Ebony
already did that in Message 50156 -- suffice it to say that Ron had a
bad case of "hoof-in-mouth disease." He just wouldn't shut up. He
pesters Hermione about who invited her to the ball, and during the
ball it's one cheap shot after another. He pushes Hermione's buttons,
insults her, insults Krum, insults his date, all the while escalating
the conflict until Hermione storms off, infuriated, which is exactly
what Ron wanted. (Interestingly, while he is consumed by jealousy, he
accuses Hermione of *betrayal*.) Later, Ron and Hermione end up
screaming at each other, and the Krum doll ends up busted into pieces. 

*That* is how Ron acts when he's jealous: he won't shut up. If he were
jealous of Harry, we could expect Ron to become something of a Draco
clone: taunting Harry every chance he gets, pushing his buttons,
*wearing* "Potter Stinks" buttons, and perhaps destroying some
artifact that Harry had given him. The Omnioculars come to mind. 

So it's significant that during The Rift, Ron gives Harry the silent
treatment.

When you give someone the silent treatment, you're usually
communicating two things: 

1) You've hurt me badly, and if I interact with you again I risk
getting hurt.

2) The ball's in your court.

I say usually, because the silent treatment can also be a childish way
of punishing someone. This is exactly what Harry thinks Ron is doing,
and it ticks him off so badly he pays Ron back by not talking to him
either. Which must reinforce Ron's belief that Harry is rejecting him,
thus discouraging Ron from exposing himself to more rejection, thus
ticking off Harry some more, and around and around it goes.

But if Ron is hell-bent on punishing Harry, he sure passes up on some
prime opportunities to stick it to him good. 

The first is the I See No Difference episode, wherein Malfoy first
shows up with the "Support Cedric Diggory/Potter Stinks" badges
outside Snape's dungeon. "Ron was standing against the wall with Dean
and Seamus. He wasn't laughing, but he wasn't sticking up for Harry
either."

That's Harry's way of seeing it. You could just as easily say, "He
wasn't sticking up for Harry, but he wasn't laughing, either." Ron can
see that Harry's having a rough time of it; a good sneer from Ron at
this point would be a good way to get in a jab or two. And yet he
refrains.

After they get into Potions, Ron sits by Seamus and Dean, leaving
Harry alone. Harry sees it as Ron punishing him; Ron is likely
protecting himself from more rejection. When Colin rushes in to tell
Snape that Harry is wanted for a photo shoot, Harry looks over at Ron,
who is "staring determinedly at the ceiling." This really should have
been Ron's cue to shoot a dirty look at Harry that says "well, you're
getting what you wanted, fame-boy." But he doesn't. 

Ron does finally speak to Harry when he encounters him in the
dormitory, after the photo shoot.

     "You've had an owl," said Ron brusquely the moment [Harry] walked
in. He was pointing at Harry's pillow. The school barn owl was waiting
for him there

     "Oh -- right," said Harry.
     
     "And we've got to do our detentions tomorrow night, Snape's
dungeon," said Ron. 

     He then walked straight out of the room, not looking at Harry.

Harry passes on the opportunity to go talk to -- or hit -- Ron because
he knows the letter is from Sirius. The next night when they do their
detentions, they both pass on the opportunity to talk it out.

Harry had half hoped they would make things up during the two hours
they were forced to pickle rats' brains in Snape's dungeon, but that
had been the day Rita's article had appeared, which seemed to have
confirmed Ron's belief that Harry was really enjoying all the attention.

Seemed, yes, but Harry doesn't know for sure what Ron thought of the
article. Maybe Ron *did* think that Harry was having a good time, but
that would only deepen his conviction that Harry had ditched him on
purpose. 

This all brings us to the scene which, IMO, is one of the most
powerful scenes between Ron and Harry in the whole series. In fact,
this whole essay derives from meditations on this scene and what it
might mean.

**********************

Harry has just gone to see the dragons, and now he's talking with
Sirius in the fireplace. Sirius is just about to tell Harry how to
handle dragons when Harry hears someone coming down the staircase.

It was Ron. Dressed in his maroon paisley pajamas, Ron stopped dead
facing Harry across the room, and looked around.

     "Who were you talking to?" he said.

     "What's that got to do with you?" Harry snarled. "What are you
doing down here at this time of night?"

     "I just wondered where you --" Ron broke off, shrugging.
"Nothing. I'm going back to bed."

     "Just thought you'd come nosing around, did you?" Harry shouted.
He knew that Ron had no idea what he'd walked in on, knew he hadn't
done it on purpose, but he didn't care -- at this moment he hated
everything about Ron, right down to the several inches of bare ankle
showing beneath his pajama trousers.

     "Sorry about that," said Ron, his face reddening with anger.
"Should've realized you didn't want to be disturbed. I'll let you go
on practicing for your next interview in peace."

     Harry seized one of the POTTER REALLY STINKS badges off the table
and chucked it, as hard as he could, across the room. It hit Ron in
the forehead and bounced off.

     "There you go," Harry said. "Something for you to wear on
Tuesday. You might even have a scar now, if you're lucky ... That's
what you want, isn't it?"

     He strode across the room toward the stairs; he half expected Ron
to stop him, he would even have liked Ron to throw a punch at him, but
Ron just stood there in his too-small pajamas, and Harry, having
stormed upstairs, lay awake in bed fuming for a long time afterward
and didn't hear him come up to bed.

Ron just stood there. Ron. Hot-tempered, easily-provoked,
always-have-to-grab-his-robes-to-hold-him-back Ron. Harry has just
vented a significant amount of wrath his way, including a physical
attack, but Ron just stands there. 

Why?

And for that matter, why did Ron go downstairs in the first place? If
JKR simply needed someone to interrupt Sirius, she could have used
anyone in Gryffindor tower. And yet it's Ron, who is supposedly
punishing Harry out of jealousy.

It was to see where Harry was, he almost admits. It's well after 1
a.m., and Ron knows that Harry's not in bed. You might think that
Harry's conversation with Sirius in the common room awakened him, but
I doubt Harry and Sirius were talking very loudly. It's entirely
possible that Ron had already been awake, or at least half-awake,
waiting for Harry to come up to the dorm the way you do when you worry
about someone. It gets later and later. He hears a conversation in the
common room, possibly he recognizes Harry's voice (but not Sirius's),
and comes down to see what's up. 

You don't do that when you're punishing someone. You don't let them
see that you give a hang about where they are at one in the morning.
And yet Ron did. 

::pauses to remove dust particle from eye::

Harry was already angry enough at Ron, but now he's stopped Sirius
from telling him how to deal with dragons. He goes volcanic all over
Ron, who gets defensive and lobs back another "fame-boy" accusation.
And then Harry chucks the badge and accuses Ron of wanting to be
famous, too. Of wanting to be *him*. 

I don't know for sure what Ron thought of that. It's the first time
that Harry has voiced his suspicions about Ron's motives. (I don't
know that Hermione said "Oh Ron, you're just being jealous," because
he probably would have defended himself in such a way as to let
Hermione know that he wasn't. He might have told her the real reason
he was mad, or at least alluded to it. Or not.) 

Either way, Ron's reaction to this particular bit of Harry's vitriol
isn't defensiveness; it seems more like *shock*. Harry's earlier angry
words would have fit in with the "I've ditched you" paradigm, because
he's telling Ron to butt out. Yet "here, have a scar; that's what you
want" might have come out of nowhere from Ron's perspective, and he's
too stunned to react.

So when Harry goes up to the dorms, he has to pass right by Ron,
giving Ron ample opportunity to give Harry a good punch, or at least
pop off a smart retort. But again, Ron passes on the opportunity to
lash out at Harry, even though Harry has flat-out attacked him.

This absence of vindictiveness is something that gets overlooked when
analyzing Ron's character. Vindictiveness is another petty tendency,
belonging in the same category as jealousy and often accompanying it.
It's really not likely that Ron would indulge in jealousy but not in
retaliation -- not when he's forced to be in the same room with Harry
so often. It would have been more than easy for him to make bitter
little remarks, ostensibly when speaking to Hermione, that were really
directed at Harry. Ron certainly *has* the capacity to wound with
words, and sometimes he uses it, but not with Harry. Because has no
intention of punishing him.

(And just as a side note, can someone -- preferably a male person --
explain the dynamic wherein Harry and Ron would have been able to
smooth things over more quickly had they actually gotten into a fist
fight? Harry's urge to hit Ron seems tied up in his desire to end the
conflict, and I've heard that sometimes guys who are mad at each other
can reconcile more easily when they've beat on each other a bit. It's
something we wimmens don't understand at all.)

There is an indication of some melting of the ice on the day before
the First Task. In Divination, Trelawney predicts that "people born in
July [are] in great danger of sudden, violent deaths."

     "Well, that's good," said Harry, loudly, his temper getting the
better of him, "just as long as it's not drawn-out. I don't want to
suffer."

     Ron looked for a moment as though he was going to laugh; he
certainly caught Harry's eye for the first time in days, but Harry was
still feeling too resentful toward Ron to care.

I don't know if the Badge Chuck did anything toward changing Ron's
beliefs, but it's possible it did, given that Ron reacts positively to
Harry for a moment. I tend to believe that Ron altered his perspective
on the situation slowly, not suddenly during the First Task. Hermione
must have told Ron that Harry thought someone was trying to kill him,
and given Harry's propensity for attracting that kind of danger, Ron
had to at least put it in the back of his mind as a possibility. He
might even have been *entertaining* the idea that Harry was telling
the truth. But if he was, why did Harry refuse to speak to him, too?
Why didn't Harry try further to persuade him? 

I'm guessing that by the time Harry tackled the dragon, Ron was still
hurting but for a different reason. I have no canon to back that up --
it's just a hunch that's based partly on the fact that what Ron says
to Harry after the First Task doesn't make much sense to me.

     "Harry," he said, very seriously, "whoever put your name in that
goblet -- I -- I reckon they're trying to do you in!"
 
Unless I'm much mistaken, the general assumption here is that once Ron
saw how dangerous the First Task was, he figured that Harry wouldn't
have put himself in that kind of danger; ergo, someone else put his
name in. However, even if no one were trying to kill Harry he'd still
be tackling dragons. Even if *Ron* had managed to become a champion
he'd still be tackling dragons. So it must be something else about the
First Task that prods Ron into making the first move toward
reconciliation.

I imagine that Ron pretty much knew that Harry had been telling the
truth: he was privy to how much "fun" Harry was having with his
"glory," and it was exactly the same amount of "fun" Harry always had
-- none. Yet he was still waiting for Harry to apologize because from
his perspective, Harry had still been acting beastly towards him.  Yet
as he watched Harry risk his life, swooping in the air around a
50-foot, fire-breathing, *nesting* dragon like a mosquito looking for
bite, he had to be awfully worried. Before he says anything to Harry
afterwards, "Harry [looked] at Ron, who was very white and staring at
Harry as though he were a ghost."

Nothing like risking losing someone through death to make you set
aside all your differences, is there? How many TV movies rely on this
principle? Parent argues with child, child gets into danger, parent
nearly loses child, parent anguishes that the last words between them
were harsh, parent gains new appreciation for child, and the old
argument is forgotten.

I think this is what happens with Ron. During the First Task, he
doesn't suddenly realize that Harry was telling the truth; he realizes
that he could *lose* Harry, and the hurt that would result from *that*
would exceed his current hurt tenfold. It just wasn't worth it anymore
for Ron to perpetuate the silence. It wasn't worth it to see Harry
every day and have that stupid tension pass between them. It wasn't
worth it to not be the best friend of Harry Potter any more.

It's a credit to Ron's character that he went ahead and apologized (or
at least tried to) for not believing Harry even when he saw himself as
one who was wronged. It's a credit to Harry's character that when he
saw that Ron was sincere, he forgave him instantly, and forgot about
it. Neither of them raises the issue again, and they go back to being
mugre y uñas as if nothing had ever happened.

So. Should Ron have trusted Harry to not cut him out of something so
important? Yeah, he probably should have. Should Harry have been less
stubborn and tried to find out what Ron's real problem was? Yeah, he
probably should have. Should Hermione have refrained from jumping to
conclusions and telling them to Harry? Yeah, she probably should have.

But the mistakes they all made are honest mistakes -- indicative of
being flawed humans rather than of having flawed characters. Rather
than a case of Ron or Harry being at fault, The Rift appears to be a
Big Misunderstanding more than anything, which makes it impossible for
me to demonize any of them in this matter.

It's funny, though. Harry never does learn the real reason why Ron was
upset. After the Second Task, the narrator, using Harry's thoughts as
fodder, says:

     One of the best things about the aftermath of the second task was
that everybody was very keen to hear details of what had happened down
in the lake, which meant that Ron was getting to share Harry's
limelight for once.

I'm sure Ron enjoys the attention every bit as much as Harry thinks he
does, but I'm just as sure that what *really* makes Ron happy is
knowing that the great Harry Potter would sorely miss *him*.

--Dicentra, donning a C.R.A.B. badge for the very first time and
shining it proudly