Ship predictions(scenarios)

Justine74 at aol.com Justine74 at aol.com
Wed Feb 11 04:14:08 UTC 2004


No: HPFGUIDX 90718

Kitten signed off:
> Kitten...
> Who thinks Harry should end up with a total ghost character, like 
> Susan bones, or Sally Anne Perks, Blaise Zabini, Hannah Abbott. I 
> guess you do ship who you Identify with...As I go back into lurkdom 


Well from one lurker to another, I could not agree more.  One of the 
strongest impressions I personally received from OOTP, with its borderline 
post-traumatic/definitely depressed Harry, its central character death, and its
slight sullying of previously "above-reproach" characters (from James to
Dumbledore to even Molly), is that (1) JKR wants to inject a healthy dose of 
realism in these books whenever she can and (2) that she wants to continually 
shake up things in Harry's world, thereby throwing the audience off whenever 
she can.  That's why, at this point, I don't think that the "Big 6" of 
H/H/R/G/N/L are going to neatly pair up with one another.  I mean there are 
definitely good arguments that can be made for H/H, R/H, H/G, R/L and N/G, but 
I don't know ... I suppose this is more of a gut feeling that anything else, 
but JKR seems so willing to take several of her characters, particularly Harry, 
to such dark, painful places at times, that I just don't see her ending on a 
perfectly neat note like R/H and H/G, where everyone is all happily Weasley 
forever.  Also in terms of her fondness for a certain level of realism, though 
getting together with one's friend's sister or one's best friend is certainly 
not unrealistic, there are certainly a lot of other people in the world to 
choose from.  I see her recognizing this by having Harry expand his sphere of 
friendships outside of Gryffindor with the DA.

And keeping all this "bringing in new people into Harry's life" and "shaking 
things up" thoughts in mind, I just can't shake this "Harry falls for Susan 
Bones in Book 6 or 7" feeling that I got after reading OOTP. Everytime I 
mention it to someone I know who reads the books they always have a good laugh, 
and so do I, because I know the theory is definitely out of the mainstream to 
say the least <g>.  I mean there is certainly nowhere near the canon support 
for it as there would be for a H/H, H/G or even H/L pairing.  But at the same 
time what JKR does with Susan Bones in OOTP is very similar to what she did 
with Cedric Diggory in Book 3 and Cho Chang in Books 3 and 4.  In the case of 
latter two, the initial introduction just seemed almost superfluous, but each 
had a tidbit of additional (and later useful) information, like Cedric was a 
fair person and that Cho was pretty. These little moments of name-dropping and 
trait descriptions proved to be understated foreshadowing for some pretty 
important characters in later books.

And in the case of Susan Bones, after really not hearing about her for 
several books, we suddenly get her aunt being helpful to Harry at that hearing, 
we get all kinds of reminders about how her family members were also murdered 
by Voldemort, we get a description of Susan's appearance (having a "long plait" 
I think) in a series where appearance descriptions are generally reserved for 
characters who have more importance than Susan Bones appears to have at 
present, and finally, we get a brief mention of a "commiseration moment," where 
Susan relates to Harry that she now knows how he feels when he gets attention 
for his parents' deaths, after the murders of her relatives become more 
prominent news again.  It's certainly not enough canon evidence to make a 
definitive prediction about anything, but JKR doesn't usually put in little 
tidbits for nothing either.

But like Kitten said, "I guess you do ship who you Identify with," and I 
guess I'm not completely sold on any of the 3 major girls, Hermione, Ginny and 
Luna as being perfectly right for Harry.  The best one of the 3, IMO, would be 
Hermione, but I still see her as being more platonic than anything.  And I 
guess I'm still looking for JKR to continue to "shake things up" in this 
shipping area, and putting Harry with a ghost character would be a perfect way 
of doing that.  :-)

Okay, back to lurkdom as well. :-)





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