[HPforGrownups] Re: Why did JKR not explore H/Hr as canon?

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 168734

Ken:
> No, she doesn't show it and I guess that is the problem for those of
> you who hate the "new" Ginny. She doesn't show it *because Harry
> doesn't notice it*. It is there, very subtly, all along. I think that
> Ginny is *both* starstruck and genuinely attracted to Harry from the
> beginning. Ginny is acting her age in the beginning, the starstruck
> quality drops away, realistically so, but the attraction remains even
> when she distracts herself with other boys. *We* don't see that last
> bit because *Harry* doesn't notice. Harry doesn't seem to really
> notice girls at all until page 388 of GOF (US pb ed); when he needs to
> get a date for the Yule Ball.

Magpie:
Actually, I notice plenty of things Harry doesn't notice. And Harry does 
notice Ginny perfectly well before her personality change. It's not like 
she's invisible. She had, imo, a perfectly coherent personality in books 1-4 
that was to me so different in Book 5-6 that Ginny's first *line* in OotP 
made me say, "Oh, this is the book where Ginny's going to start being pushed 
as the greatest girl for Harry." Literally. Not that I'm a great psychic 
reader or anything, but I was proved right as the book went on, obviously. 
Ginny is *so* showing off the new personality in that scene. It's not that 
the two Ginny's don't have anything in common in my mind, but in the way Ron 
and Harry have plenty of things in common without being the same character. 
For instance, Ginny's standing up for herself in Harry in CoS and GoF 
actually doesn't remind me of Ginny in the latter two books at all. Except 
in the most general "Here is Ginny being assertive" way (with different 
results).

I'm talking about her, of course, as a fictional character. People can 
change and do things you don't expect. But JKR writes characters very 
clearly--and she knows she's unveiling somebody here. I remember going back 
and checking her first scene against her last scene in GoF.

I think I get the joke or the point. It's supposed to be funny how the girl 
is all starstruck and then when she blossoms Harry has to chase her when she 
used to be chasing him and she was shy so Harry didn't see her not-shy 
personality and wow, this is what she was all the time etc. The fact that 
Harry "didn't notice" her personality is a joke in the text itself (and just 
when Harry starts noticing, other characters start liking to talk about 
Ginny) But I still think the hiding of her personality and revelation of it 
later was done in a way thatI could see but not believe except as a device. 
She still reads to me as first a girl I like fine but who wouldn't have been 
Harry's girlfriend, followed by The Best Girl Ever (in the eyes of somebody 
besides me).

All of which leads to my never seeing H/Hr anywhere in the text (it has a 
mother/son vibe to me). I didn't know how the girl I first saw as Ginny was 
going to get Harry up until GoF, but the second she had that opening scene 
in OotP (where I personally think Ginny II was introduced far more 
effectively than Tonks as far as new characters go) it was pretty clear it 
was a done deal. Ron and Hermione had been the secondary couple for several 
books by then. They're the bickering couple; Harry and Ginny are the 
Romantic couple.

-m