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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