Unappreciated Weasleys (was: Prefects and points)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 106136

Thanks to Del and several other members that recently brought up 
something that has been bothering me too: JKR insulting treatment of 
Ron. Is he just a comic relief? IMO the problem is actually slightly 
different: In OotP Ron actually DOES many worthy things, only they 
are very well hidden. Also I'd like to point out that this pattern 
(minus the comic relief) is also common to his sister Ginny.  

I'll start with Ginny, because she's the one who set this pattern 
almost from the beginning of the saga. In CoS, the 11 yrs old Ginny 
had spent almost a whole year possessed by Diary!Riddle. What did she 
have to go through? We don't really know. Depending on your 
imagination, this could easily be worse than anything Harry had to go 
through in five books. My point is exactly that: we don't know. After 
CoS it is never even mentioned. Not a word. To be exact, in OotP 
Harry finally admits "I forgot" and stiff-upper-lip-Ginny answers 
with two words: "lucky you". I have to admit, until reading 
this "lucky you" I also forgot. 

During three years, Ginny is the classic waiting lover. She sits and 
waits for her hero to notice her. Nothing special about it, of 
course. This has been the fate of many romantic heroines. But JKR has 
an original twist: the one-sided romance is described (if you can 
call it that) from the point-of-view of the oblivious hero. And he's 
oblivious all right. Three years of yearning and heartache go almost 
unnoticed and unmentioned. One begins to wonder why they are there at 
all.

In GoF, the unnoticed Ginny gets an opportunity that in any self-
respecting roman would have earned her at least a chapter of 
undiluted teen anguish: She is unexpectedly asked to go to the Yule 
Ball with her hero, and she turns it down because she had already 
said she would go with, of all people, Neville. You'd think that 
Harry would acknowledge, for one whole second at least, that Ginny 
had just made a noble sacrifice. He doesn't. The jiggling Parvati and 
Lavender have just entered the common room, and Ginny's deed is 
forgotten forever.

Back to Ron. In OotP, Ron seems to catch his sister's virus for doing 
anything heroic or worthy off page. In fact, they often do these 
worthy things together in the same off-page. Remember how in PoA we 
all cheered for Harry on his trusty Firebolt finally winning the 
quidditch cup after a heroic match? In OotP, Ron and Ginny do that 
without quidditch-star Harry, without a Firebolt, and without Captain 
Wood and the Amazing Twins either. Ron pulls nobody-knows-how-many 
glorious saves, and then Ginny takes the snitch right from under the 
nose of (oh, sweet revenge!) Cho Chang. But do we get to watch this? 
Do we get to hear Lee Jordan beside himself with admiration? No we 
don't. Mr Point-Of-View had to go with Miss Perfect to the forbidden 
forest. But we do get to see Ron letting in that first and only goal.

Then we are back to the forest. Hermione as usual takes center stage 
as she and Harry are off again with Umbridge, a giant and a herd of 
mad centaurs. But now they are stuck, alone and wandless in the 
middle of the Forbidden Forest. And whom to the rescue? Ron and Co. 
How did they manage to track and find H&H in the forest? We're not 
told. How did they get over the entire Inquisitorial Squad? "Couple 
of Stunners, a Disarming Charm" says Ron airily as he returns their 
wands. Funny how he, who is frequently accused of greedily licking 
the scraps of Harry's fame, hardly takes any credit to himself. He 
does mention Neville bringing in a nice Impedimente and his sister 
taking down Draco with a royal bat bogie jinx, but this is still off 
page. In the movie it probably won't even be a deleted scene. All 
they did, after all, was flattening a roomful of Slytherins without 
sustaining a single hit. And how did they manage to get their wands 
back in the first place? They were well immobilized when we left them 
in Umbridge's office. Was it some clever ploy of Ron or Ginny? We'll 
probably never find out.

Then we get to the great battle in the DoM. Somehow by pure 
coincidence (yeah right) Harry goes one direction with Hermione and 
Neville, while Ron and Ginny run the other direction with Luna. So 
again we get to read a detailed description of Hermione's courage and 
resourcefulness (I don't even bother to count how many times she and 
Harry save each other's life) as well as her noble conduct ("you 
can't hurt a baby!"). Then Hermione is injured and Harry is frantic. 
Don't let her be dead! And what were Ron, Ginny and Luna doing during 
all that time? Well, they were apparently doing a lot, fighting 
several DEs and getting hurt and probably saving each other's lives 
several times over, but WE DON'T GET TO SEE IT. All we get is Luna's 
sketchy report. Turns out they were fighting the DEs in zero gravity, 
in the dark, in a giant moving model of the solar system. Wow! This 
could have been the grandest action scene in OotP, and what do we 
ever hear about it? "I reducto Pluto in his face". Not exactly 
detailed. And even that much we get from Luna. The injured Ginny is 
the usual stiff-upper-lip (she clearly has too many brothers and too 
few sisters. Someone should explain to her that the strong-and-silent 
thing is for guys). Ron is even worse. Instead of getting hit with 
something heroically looking, such as a bleeding shoulder wound, or 
something that will leave an interesting scar on his forehead, he 
gets hit with something that makes him tell rude jokes and do stupid 
things. How appropriate.

OK, I think there is definitely a pattern here. If JKR doesn't think 
much of Ron and Ginny, why does she make them do and go through all 
these things? But if she does think highly of them, why does 
everything heroic they do goes almost unnoticed? Does she prepare us 
for something? And what could that be?

Neri