Welcome to Newbies; very *very* late reply to Ron in the Background ....... or not (Long)

[pennylin]

Hi all --

I've been extremely busy in the last few months (ever since I took on the job of answering the Lexicon's incoming emails to be exact!  <g> at Steve) and had let over 100 messages pile up in this folder of my inbox.  :::ouch:::  

Welcome to all the new members .... I read all your intros!  Alas, no new Harry/Hermione shippers it would seem.  Kelley, did you rig that invite list?  <g>  I shall continue to skip all the Snape-related posts, btw.  

I saw in Trina's intro that she just finished the last Jasper Fforde novel too ...... wondering if others in this group are enjoying Fforde as much as I am?  

My own intro could probably use a small update here and there: besides the obvious of being a year older, I am also quite a bit more pregnant than I was then.  :--)  Am expecting baby Harry to arrive in late December (so Trelawney was right in a sense, eh?).  My 3-yr old daughter is still hoping for a change in gender as she tells me daily that she really, really wanted a *sister.*  Pregnancy has been the other thing slowing me down (that and taking lots of pre-baby trips).  I just finished Fforde's latest novel, "Shadow Divers" and "BushWorld" in the last few weeks.  

Now, apologies to Jo Serenadust for taking far longer than she did in replying to this topic.  I originally posted a message on 6/19 and Jo replied on 7/28 when I was on a vacation.  I ......er........got sidetracked and haven't replied until now.  Better late than never?!  Now if I could remember what my train of thought was when I originally read Jo's response ........<g>

Ah yes ....... in general summation, Jo is arguing that Harry is less and less dependent on just Ron and Hermione and his circle of supporters is ever-widening.  She says:

<<<So, while Penny sees Harry being separated from just Ron in the 
continuing story arc, I'm seeing him having to move outside the 
charmed circle of the trio, effectively distancing him from both Ron 
and Hermione.  They are still his best friends (and I still think 
that Ron is the "thing" he would miss most), but he now needs more 
than they alone can give him.  Luckily, the groundwork has been laid 
in OOP for Harry to have much broader support, and just in time, too.>>>

Actually, I agreed with most of your post, Jo (a few niggling small details here and there that I would disagree with ..... for example, I don't think it matters whether Ron would have been too protective to be separated from Ginny in the DoM sequence, the choice wasn't in his hands to make).  But, I think you've written mostly about something entirely different than what I was originally discussing.  

In your summation above though, I don't think you've quite got my point.  It's not that I think Harry is being separated just from Ron; I don't really see him as "separated" from Ron.  I just see that Ron has less and less development on-screen and less and less importance to the overall narrative, while Hermione seems to be slowly but surely gaining in importance to both the overall narrative and to Harry himself.  I see Harry and Hermione as increasingly linked by shared experience and by growing similar outlook (both use the name Voldemort freely now for example).  I don't think that means that Harry can't and won't benefit from widening his circle to include more of Neville, Luna, Ginny and others of the DA.  But, I think we're talking about two separate things here.  I don't think that my theory is necessarily mutually exclusive from what you're discussing though .... I agree completely with the idea that Harry's circle is widening and that this is a good thing.  But, I think Ron's character development has suffered in the last book in particular ..... and when one considers the trend from PoA onwards, it's obvious to me that Hermione has really increased in importance significantly while Ron has become more sidelined.

Penny
(hoping some of that made sense ...... bit hard to answer substantive posts 3 months later!)



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