[HPforGrownups] GoF fight between Harry and Ron/ On the perfection of moral virtues. LONG

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 169085

 Alla:
> But from the position of fourteen year old, whose best friend just
> accused him of God knows what, why? He is stressed by entering a
> tournament he does not want to enter, nobody (including his best
> friend)  believe him that he did not do it ( well, Hermione does)
> and he has to go and deal with Ron's jealousy?

Magpie:
Actually, I'd say yeah, a little. Obviously Ron's whole position on this 
subject is wrong, but Ron spends *a lot* or time worrying about Harry's 
problems and Harry's moods. And Harry rarely has to do the same. Ron here is 
going to apologize, but it's not like Harry ever thought of saying, "Oh, and 
sorry for that crack about your wanting a scar." So I don't think it's too 
much to expect Harry to care about Ron's feelings, even if they're silly. If 
he has to wait until he's not under some sort of threat to care about his 
friends, he'll have spent the first 7 years with barely any time to do that.

I realize boys might not feel the need to go over everything said in a fight 
but still--when Ron's dealing with Quidditch troubles in OotP Harry's also 
wrapped up in his own issues and takes this position ("I can't even play 
Quidditch, so I'm the one with the problem")--as well as not being able to 
help anyway because he doesn't know how to help with that sort of problem. 
But still, it leads to a pattern of Harry getting a lot of support from Ron 
and Ron not only not needing as much support from Harry, but not asking for 
it (Ron's used to being in that role). I don't think it's asking too much 
(it actually might be a good thing) for Harry to deal with something like 
Ron's jealousy, even while he is, as usual, dealing with much more glamorous 
problems. Ordinary people do have problems too. And this is a flaw of 
Harry's anyway, imo, given a lot of his behavior in OotP, like with Seamus.

Ron's not believing Harry does go to some of his own insecurities, and it's 
really not a bad thing for friends to recognize those things in each 
other--just as Ron knows not to take it personally when Harry's being 
paranoid in OotP. As it happens, Ron's had a lot more chances to prove his 
willingness to trust Harry and he's proved it a lot. This one time, on what 
he didn't think was a life threatening thing, he didn't.

Ron is wrong here and needed to apologize, but it was a real disappointment 
to me that the fight brought up issues that were then swept away with Ron 
realizing Harry hadn't put his name in the Goblet and saying so, as if the 
fight hadn't brought up issues other than that. It was never, that I could 
see, just about the facts of Harry putting his name in the Goblet or not.

Alla:
> I did think that it was another sacrifice of the character writing
> to the plot necessities, since I thought Ron and Hermione should
> have believed Harry right away. About Malfoy of all people, whom
> they are always suspiciuous about, but this is here on the page.
>
> I found it to be very dissapointing.

Magpie:
I thought it was necessary. First, it's not completely unrealistic that 
sometimes, when Harry's friends don't see Harry himself in danger, they 
might want to focus on things that interest them and not automatically do 
what Harry is focused on. But more importantly, Harry's understanding of 
what Malfoy could be up to was something that separated him from most other 
students.

It wasn't, imo, about Hermione and Ron not wanting to catch the murderer, 
since that (oddly) was never a big concern for the school besides Harry. It 
was that distinction of everyone else thinking Malfoy couldn't be doing 
anything important and Harry instictively knowing not only that Voldemort 
might target him, but what Malfoy might do because of his family. It was 
nicely foreshadowed back in PoA when Draco makes the comment about wanting 
to go after Sirius Black if his family had been killed. That's the first 
time Ron and Hermione are not on the same page as Harry. He says "Malfoy 
knows" and they don't see why'd he'd ever listen to him.

Having just listened to a cool related paper this weekend, it got me also 
thinking that it's important that Harry begin dealing with his own Gothic 
family issues here--as Sirius' heir, that means the Blacks. Harry starts 
moving towards Slytherin and the Black family in HBP. Plot-wise, this was 
about Harry taking his own solitary journey into Slytherin (several 
journeys, actually). He's inherited their house, and it was sort of fitting 
that Ron and Hermione were a bit separated from his dealings with them.

That said, Ron and Hermione *do* believe him that Malfoy is up to something. 
They know that for a fact. They don't think there's proof he's the person 
trying to murder people (and some of their denials are a bit of a stretch, 
especially given the type of thing they've run with before), but then, 
that's not really a case of "believing" Harry since it's not like Harry is 
telling the truth--it's only his theory. HBP is a very different book in 
that for once Voldemort isn't targetting Harry. He's not in danger. If he 
were I think they'd get to work--as they do when he asks them to guard the 
school while he's gone. Ron and Harry don't have to get interested in this 
because Harry is any more than Ron and Harry have to really be enthusiastic 
about SPEW because Hermione likes it.

-m (who also thinks that the difference in Ron's Quidditch troubles between 
OotP and HBP are like the difference between white and off-white)