who will betray the Order?

[serenadust]

No: HPFGUIDX 82839

Mandy wrote:

<snip>
> 
> But the bigger, personal betrayal of Harry will come from Ron, who 
> IMO, is destined to replay the role of Leonties in the only other 
> story with a 'Hermione' in it.  Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. 

<snip summary of The Winter's Tale>
 
  The set-up is perfect.  The seeds of Ron's jealously of Harry have 
already been 
> laid throughout the 5 books, and I believe the Quiddich match in 
Book 
> 5 will be the straw that breaks the camels back.  Ron is going to 
> begin to question why his two best friends could not be at his cup 
> winning game.  Remember, his winning and holding the Quiddich 
House 
> Cup was in his fantasy in the Mirror of Irised, for Harry and 
> Hermione not to be there, even though they have a valid excuse, is 
> going to really hurt when he spends the summer dwelling on it.  
> Potent stuff.  Love triangle jealousy can create a nasty mess.  I 
> hate to think of what Ron can do to hurt Harry.


We already know what Ron can do to hurt Harry; he can withdraw his 
friendship as he appeared to have done during The Rift in GoF.  Up 
until OoP, that incident resulted in Harry's most miserable stretch 
of time at Hogwarts, and his reconciliation with Ron provided the 
most giddily happy Harry we've seen so far.

Judging from the persistence of the Winter's Tale theory on this 
list, it's actual occurance in canon will be the biggest non-
surprise JKR could come up with, IMO.  Personally, I very much doubt 
that she's re-writing Shakespeare any more than I think that she's 
going to draw direct, one-to-one parallels between MWPP and Harry's 
generation. Of course, I also think that a trio romantic triangle is 
unlikely just because of my own personal dislike of this sort of 
soap opera, so I do have a built in bias there ;-).

Still, I think that Rowling has shown us that Ron's already resolved 
his momentary disquiet at Harry and Hermione's absence at his 
Quidditch triumph and I don't think it would be in character for him 
to start brooding about it later.  In fact, I think that the whole 
reason that Ron has his moment of glory off-stage as it were, is 
that he's got to come into his own out of the shadow of Harry or his 
family. For me, this was the key to Ron's character development in 
OoP.

As for who I think the betrayer will be, I'm not so sure there's 
going to be one per se, at least not in the sense that Peter P. 
betrayed his friends. Been there, done that and as I said earlier, I 
don't think Rowling is writing history repeating itself in a literal 
sense.  We've already seen a trusted character betray Harry and turn 
out to be a Deatheater.  Doing it again would be like yet another 
unregistered animagus, and I think JKR is far too clever for that.

JMHO, of course,

Jo Serenadust