SHIP Calculus--JKR site spoiler

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 119752


I'll indulge my inner adolescent here. I'm not a shipper, per se, but I've always felt that the 
romantic subplot(s) of the series were important and only likely to become more so as the 
characters mature. Also, I write fic from time to time, and so the question of 
attachments has played through my head. So JKR's announcement that another 
potential ship is off of the table made me think....

Okay, so Luna/Neville is no longer possible. Too bad. I actually hadn't thought about them 
much, but they would have been cute. JKR's right though--some of Luna's wilder ideas 
would probably scare the pants off of Harry.

Where does that leave us? Out of all the possible pairings, the loss of one can't be too big 
a deal, right?

Well, I'm going to posit some assumptions, and we'll see how big a deal it is.

First of all, my assumption since OotP came out has been that--should they live--the Trio 
will become attached to the secondary trio who became so important during the course of 
that book: Ginny, Neville and Luna. I realize this isn't necessarily the case, but there are a 
number of reasons to believe it is so--all three of the secondary trio members have, at 
some point, expressed a clear interest in one of the members of the Trio--Ginny for Harry 
(obviously), Luna for Ron and--more subtly--Neville for Hermione (he also asked Ginny to 
the Yule Ball). So, let's accept that for now as a working hypothesis. Okay, okay, so Theo 
Nott or Susan Bones or any one of hundreds of other characters may make this all moot. 
Go with me here.

There are a number of pairings we can fairly safely eliminate. Ginny/Ron is pretty clearly 
never going to happen. And, as much as it would make me happy to have homosexuality 
treated with some respect, and while JKR is clearly a broadminded person, I really don't 
see any canon slashing going on. So no Ron/Harry, Ron/Neville or Neville/Harry, 
Hermione/Ginny, Hermione/Luna (hee!) or Luna/Ginny. Likewise no threesomes, 
foursomes or sixsomes outside of fanon. ^.^

So what have we got left?

If Hermione ends up with Ron, the others will sort themselves out Ginny/Neville and Luna/
Harry.

If Hermione ends up with Harry, then we get Luna/Ron and Ginny/Neville.

If Hermione ends up with Neville, then we have Luna/Ron and Ginny/Harry.

That's it. No other options.

Of course, they might play musical chairs over the course of books 6 and 7. And they may 
(as I said) pair up with others. And one or more may die.

Still. Gives one pause, doesn't it?