SHIP:Hermione's feelings for Ron in OotP (Was: Re: Harry's first Kiss)

[Jenni A.M. Merrifield]

No: HPFGUIDX 108476

  Gahhhh!!!!  >Sploosh!<

  Help me! {splash, glub, gurrgle} I'm being *gASp* {glub} sucked 
into a {gurggle, blub} SHIPping thread! {gurggle, blub, glub}

 {blub} 

 {glub}

 {gurgle...}

 [It's too late! I'm lost!]


Jenni wrote:
> * Ron definitely likes Hermione
> * Herminoe thinks of Harry as her best friend, thinks she likes 
> Krum, and really actually likes Ron;

udder_pen_dragon said:
  Lets start with Krum, Hermione likes him and that is all, she 
spent all her time with him talking about Harry.

Jenni replies:
  When I said "thinks she likes Krum" I really meant she "thinks she 
*likes* Krum"

  (As an aside, I wish there was a word in English that fell 
between "like" and "love".  It would be nice not to have to 
emphasize or qualify "Like" to get the point across.)

  Here's my basic take on that relationship:  First, Krum asked her 
to the Yull Ball showing that he, at least, noticed that she was a 
girl and I know that, when was a 14 year old, if an older boy 
had "noticed" me in that way I would have almost instantly decided 
I "liked" him simply because he "liked" me, unless I already knew he 
was a complete skank.

  Over the rest of the year she continued to associate with him and 
he continued to favour her (hence her appearance in task II).  Since 
GoF she has continued to write to him and possibly even visited him 
over the summer.  Again, when I was in my mid-teens, there were a 
few "long distance" boys I met (usualy over summer holidays) and 
then continued to write to and, always, this was for teen-romance 
related reasons.  I just wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't had a 
romantic interest in the fellow.

  So, Hermione thinks she *likes* Krum because he *liked* her during 
GoF and has since maintained the relationship long-distance.  But, 
he is long distance, and while absence may make the heart grow 
fonder in many cases, it can also grant perspective and thereby 
allow one or both parties the opportunity to recognize how much or 
how little there really is to the relationship.


udder_pen_dragon said:
  Next Harry, Ron and Harry are her best friends, you like your best 
friends. IMO Hermione almost worships Harry and tries to mother him, 
Romance she's not letting on if she did I think that Harry at this 
time would run.

Jenni replies:
  Exactly my point.  Harry is one of her two best friends, and so 
she worries about his welfare.  If she has any romantic feelings for 
him I haven't seen that in anything she's done or said.  All my life 
I always had far more male than female friends, even in early 
highschool. I always worried about them and their lives - how things 
were going at home, at school and in their relationships.  

  My reading of why Hermione always filled Harry in on "Cho details" 
(like the fact that Cho is always crying or why she behaved the way 
she did in the tea house) was because she wanted him to have all the 
facts so he could make the best of his relationship.  


udder_pen_dragon said:
  Yes I agree [that Ron likes Hermione], [Ron] also likes Harry the 
three of
them are best friends. Hermione is the only girl Ron ever talks 
socialy with.
Even when Harry fixed Ron up with Padma P he never talked to her or 
Luna on the
train even.

udder_pen_dragon also said:
  Now Ron, I have agreed that Hermione and Ron are friends and I 
will say that they are no more than that. Going to the Yule Ball he 
tries to treat her the same way as he tries to treat Ginny and 
niether of them are having any, Ron treats Hermione like a sister he 
knows no different, he doesn't talk socialy to other girls. (sorry 
to repeat myself)

Jenni replies:
  Well, I also meant that I think Ron definitely *likes* Hermione, 
(i.e., more than as a sister), only he hasn't really accepted it 
himself.  Just the fact that he went out and bought her perfume for 
Christmas is a good sign that he has started thinking of her as a 
girl and there are definitely examples throughout GoF and OoP where 
Ron exhibits the signs of a boy who is jealous about the actual or 
percieved romantic behaviour of a girl he isn't actually dating.  
One example is in the passage you summarized and that I've quoted 
below.  

--=+=--
  'Oh,' said Ron, his smile fading slightly.  'Are you that bad at 
kissing?'
  'Dunno,' said Harry, who hadn't considered this, and immediately 
felt rather worried.  'Maybe I am.'
  'Of course you're not,' said Hermione absently, still scribbling 
away at her letter.
  'How do you know?" said Ron very sharply.
  'Because Cho spends half her time cying these days,' said Hermione 
vaguely.  'She does it at mealtimes, in the loos, all over the 
place.'
--=+=--
(OoP, Canadian Edition, p405 in chapter "The Eye of the Snake")

  That sharp "How do you know?" is exactly the type of interrogation 
a jealous guy makes when he suddenly thinks that the girl he's 
jealous about has dated or kissed someone.  In other words, he's 
suddenly worried that the reason Hermione knows that Harry isn't a 
bad kisser is because she's actually kissed him at some point.

  As for Hermione's initial response, JKR's use of the 
term "absently" to describe how Hermione replies indicated to me 
that she was just saying something to help her friend feel better by 
assuring him there was nothing for him to worry about in the kissing 
department.  She is really more focused on the letter that she's 
writing, but worries enough about how her friend feels that she's 
says something

  On the other hand, when it comes to how Hermione feels about 
Ron... Well, as you point out she often says things that sound nasty 
or mean on the surface, but there are other things said or done in 
passing that suggest that there is probably more than meets the eye 
to her words.  Let me quote some more from after the above passage 
in Oop:

--=+=--
  'You'd think a bit of kissling would cheer her [Cho] up,' said 
Ron, grinning.
  'Ron,' said Hermione in a dignified voice, dipping the point of 
her quill into her inkpot, 'you are the most insensitive wart I have 
ever had the misfortune to meet.'
  'What's that supposed to mean?' said Ron indignantly, 'What sort 
of person cries while someone's kissing them?'
[... Hermione explains how Cho feels to Harry and Ron...]
  A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then 
Ron said, 'One person can't feel all that at once, the'd explode.
  'Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't 
mean we all have,' said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.
--=+=--
(OoP, Canadian Edition, p405,406, in chapter "The Eye of the Snake")

  Even after only one reading through the series my brain recognized 
Hermione's various sniping and put-downs as one of the traditional 
signs of a girl who likes a boy but either doesn't want to admit it 
to herself or the boy just doesn't seem to "get it."

  Hermione's first comment, in response to Ron saying that a bit of 
kissing ought to cheer Cho up, wasn't actually nasty so much as a 
general purpose put down. Note how JKR uses the phrase "in a 
dignified voice" to describe Hermione's response.  It's exactly the 
kind of tone I'd take with some guy who said something that clearly 
showed he was thinking with a lower part of his anatomy rather than 
his brain.  I mean really -- Hermione is absolutely correct that 
Ron's comment is rather insensitive (and also rather typical of a 14 
year old boy, as was the "pumping fist" action he made after Harry 
admitted to kissing Cho).

  The second response was obviously intended to be nasty, but the 
question is what would make Hermione want to be deliberately nasty 
to Ron?  He is, after all, one of her two best friends -- most 
people aren't nasty to their best friends for no obvious reason.  It 
really doesn't make a lot of sense does it?  On the other hand, when 
a boy you kind of *like* has just said something that confirms he 
has a miniscule emotional range, a girl can't be blamed for getting 
a little bit frustrated and lashing out with a nasty comment or 
two.  And in that context it makes perfect sense for Hermione to say 
something nasty to Ron.

  Finally, another quote from a bit later in the book:

--=+=--
  'Well, you see,' said Hermione, with the patient air of someone 
explaining that one plus one equals two to an over-emotional 
toddler, 'you shouldn't have tolder her that you wanted to meet me 
halfway through your date.'
  'But, but,' spluttered Harry, 'but -- you told me to meet you at 
twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without 
telling her?'
  'You should have told her differntly,' said Hermione, still with 
that maddeningly patient air.  'You should have said it was really 
annoying, but I'd /made/ you promise to come along to the Three 
Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather 
spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you 
really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with 
you and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly.  And it 
might have been a good idea to mention  how ugly you think I am, 
too,' Hermione added as an afterthought.
  'But I don't think you're ugly,' said Harry, bemused.
  Hermione laughed
  'Harry, you're worse than Ron ... well, no, you're not,' she 
sighed, as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splatterd with 
mud and looking grumpy.
--=+=--
(OoP, Canadian Edition, p504-5, in chapter "Seen and Unforseen")

  For me, the key is that after laughing and saying Harry is worse 
than ron, she pauses, says no he isn't really and sighs.  I mean, 
why does she sigh?  She's just spent a lot of breath explaining to 
Harry exactly what he should have done to make his date with Cho run 
smoother (another example of her being a friend to him - here's how 
you should have handled that, now remember it for next time), so 
she's probably not sighing for Harry.  (If you've got romantic 
designs on a boy you don't tell them how they can work out this type 
of thing with another girl.)

  To me, I see the sigh reflecting the fact that she does have "more 
than friend" feelings for Ron and the fact the he just 
doesn't "understand" how girls feel and act, and probably wouldn't 
recognize that a girl *likes* him if she came up to him and said so.

udder_pen_dragon also said:
  Now my comment: Hermione is a very bright girl and she knows that 
subtle and Ron W are a no, no. So what does this mean besides Ron 
you are my friend but that is all and possibly Harry I wont cry if 
you kiss me? 

Jenni again
  I hope my comments above help explain why I, at least, think that 
the passage you quote means exactly the opposite of what you've 
suggested.

  So, while she may know that subtle and Ron W don't go together, 
since she really hasn't fully admitted how much she feels for him to 
herself, she isn't really trying to be subtle.  In this particular 
passage it she's really more frustrated with him than anything else.

  And the "absently" and "vaguely" descriptors on her comments to 
Harry about him not kissing badly, is nothing more than an attempt 
to making him feel better by giving him some more information about 
Cho and not any indication that she thinks about him kissing her.

Jenni
Who really can't believe she let herself get sucked into this enough 
to actually do the research necessary to analyse exactly why she 
feels the way she feels about who is romantically inclined towards 
who... ;-)