SHIP: Why did JKR not explore H/Hr as canon?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168726

Neil wrote: 
> My problem with Ginny is that JKR never showed her changing from a
groupie to someone who liked Harry because he was Harry and not the
boy who lived.
>  
> In book one she was definitely a star struck groupie and I don't
think  even the most ardent H/G shipper will deny that.  She is still
star struck in book two, her valentine refers to Harry as the hero who
defeated the  dark lord.  
> Remember in book four how all the girls wanted Harry to ask  them to
the Ball and how in book six everyone wanted Harry to ask them to the
 Christmas party. 
>  All those girls wanted Harry not for Harry, but because  he was
famous.  When did Ginny feelings become genuine and no longer that  of
a groupie.  JKR has never written anything in canon that shows this 
change take place.  To me Ginny is no better than Romilda Vane.

Carol responds:

I'm no Ginny fan myself, and no Shipper of any kind, but I think it's
a bit unfair to say that Ginny is no better than Romilda Vane, someone
Harry doesn't even know who suddenly becomes an obsessive fan who
gives him love-potion-spiked candy just to get him to take her to
Slughorn's Christmas party. 

Ginny has always been a Harry fan, and he saved her life in CoS after
she had been possessed by Diary!Tom (and releasing the Basilisk), so
she has to deal with the embarrassment of seeing him at her parents'
house after that. I think when she realized that he didn't see her any
differently--she was still Ron's little sister--she realized that it
was okay to like him, and Hermione, we're told, encouraged her to just
be herself around him, so we do see a gradual change that Harry
himself doesn't see.

We're always limited to some degree by what Harry sees and hears, but
we don't need to be so limited by the Harry filter that we turne out
things happening around him that he doesn't pick up on (the change in
Ginny being one of them) or interpret things as he does. In fact, IMO,
if we follow his impressions too closely, we're bound to be wrong.

Just as one example, when Romilda shoves a box of chocolates at him
saying that they're filled with fire whiskey and she doesn't like them
(nice of her to give them to him, then!), he doesn't recall that
Hermione has just overheard Romilda and her friends plotting to give
Harry a love potion. The reader should connect the dots: Harry doesn't.

And again, to be fair, Hermione at twelve had a crush on Gilderoy
Lockhart. Little girls go through those phases and get over them; the
fact that Ginny doesn't get over her feelings should indicate that
their not just a passing thing. She does help Harry in OoP by telling
him what it's like to be possessed; she does fight alongside him in
the DoM; she does give him her hand and lead him away from
Dumbledore's body in HBP.

As I said, I don't really like Ginny, especially her use of the
Bat-Bogey hex on people who annoy her, which reminds me of James
hexing people in the hallway, but she does seem more suited to Harry
than Hermione does (Hermione is brainy and loyal and highly useful
when he needs to train for the TWT, for example, but she always
strikes me as the second-best buddy, the Lupin of their little group,
whereas Ron is the best friend, the one he would miss most (and
therefore the person selected to be rescued in the Second Task).

Anyway, it's been clear to me since Book 1 that Ginny liked Harry and
since Book 2 that Hermione liked Ron. By Book 4, it was clear even to
the usually oblivious Harry that Ron also liked Hermione but hadn't
yet figured it out (last scene of Yule Ball chapter). And I think it
was Book 4 (might have been 5) when I realized that Ron wanted Harry
and Ginny to get together. As for Harry himself, he had to get over
Cho and realize that there's more to choosing a girlfriend than
beauty. (On a more comic level, Ron learned the same lesson with
Fleur, but he still needed his snogging sessions with Lavender to gain
confidence in his own attractiveness to the opposite sex, including
Hermione, who seemed to doubt his Quidditch abilities.)

Carol, not sure why she's responding to SHIPping threads but thinking
that Ginny needed defending here