Apologies to everyone who’s friended me for other reasons (99% of you :D) because for the next week or so, this is likely to become a Harry Potter zone. But you know, last book and all that.
And speaking of that, here is a long DH post. Warning: it’s about my favorite Trio member, Ron Weasley. And (obviously) as I love him, this is rather gushy. So, if you can’t stand the guy, you are obviously entitled to your opinion, but the stuff below cut it probably not your cup of butterbeer.
OMG. Ron.
RON.
With DH, Ron has definitely become my favorite member of the Trio for good (interestingly, he is also Mr. Mousie’s favorite, but because (according to him) Ron ‘reads’ like a real guy, and Harry doesn’t at all).
I love rooting for the underdogs, and I just love that here, confounding all usual cliché expectations, the ‘sidekick’ got to be heroic, and smart, and live, and get the girl. But all without becoming an unrealistic Gary Stu (Ron is riddled with insecurities) or detracting a bit from Harry’s achievement and glory.
If Harry’s ultimate quality is bravery (and I will be doing a Harry essay later, never fear), and Hermione’s is intelligence, Ron’s is loyalty. It must have taken a pretty loyal person to remain friends with people who always outshine him (Hermione in studies and Harry in ‘fame’), when he comes from the family where his oldest brothers always ‘got there’ first.
And that’s the thing, Ron sticks no matter what. It took a horcrux (very like the Ring, isn’t it? I think it made more headway with Ron than with Harry because Harry is used to V and Hermione is so incredibly prosaic and matter of fact) to make him snap and walk out, and even then, he wanted to get back immediately and couldn’t because of the snatchers (someone somewhere said it’s the equivalent of leaving the room in the middle of the fight, only due to the circumstances, when you cool off in a minute, the room has been buried by rubble and gone). And he spent all his time after getting away looking for them, by himself, in the middle of winter! And fished Harry of the lake, saving his life.
I love characters who can make me laugh (his comments do make me LOL) and can make me cry: the scene where he destroys the horcrux, OMG. Despite the horcrux throwing everything at him, everything in his face, taunting him with being the least loved of the Weasley children (he does get lost in the shuffle, doesn’t he? Bill was Head Boy and curse breaker (and eldest) and Charlie the quidditch wonder, and Percy the super-swot, and Fred and George are hard to overlook because they are Fred and George, and Ginny is the only girl), and Hermione preferring Harry etc etc.
And how he is shaking afterwards and Harry comforts him. Harry has grown up a lot, hasn’t he? Just as all of them have. I love it when he tells Ron that Hermione cried for a week after he left.
The thing is, much as I adore Ron/Hermione (about it more below), I love Ron/Harry friendship just as much. The Trio really is incomplete without each other.
And oh. OH. Ron/Hermione.
SO MUCH LOVE.
I love R/H so much because it’s like Wash/Zoe in Firefly, or Willow/Oz in high school Buffy. It just works. They just fit, it’s real and everyday, and no less glorious for being so. Harry/Ginny is this heroic romance trope, because he is the hero, but R/H are like people I know, like anyone, like someone I might pass on the street.
I love that he bought that advice book on how to woo/deal with women, LOL, so he can appeal to Hermione more and know how to treat her correctly (eeeeee).
I love that he asks her to dance at Bill and Fleur’s wedding: heeee, such a flashback to GoF when she told him if he was jealous of Krum he should have asked her to dance himself. So this time he did ;)
I love it when he walks out and she runs after him, crying his name (awwwww, when he tells her he heard, later).
I love that when he returns it’s not some big smoochy thing but her hitting him and being mad and…it’s just so real and normal. And Ron is keeping his head down to be in her good books :P
And OMG OMG 'You can have me, keep me' is my favorite phrase in all HP books EVER. I mean. OMG. I literally shrieked when I read that. It’s like every fiction otp kink I ever had. But in a Harry Potter book. I never thought it would happen, ever. In a drama, yes. But in HP? OMG.
Ron begging Bellatrix to take him instead of Hermione to torture?
*is dead in glee*
And then he is clawing at the walls and sobbing her name and trying to get out of the dungeon.
So much love.
I love that their first kiss is after Ron, matter of factly, expressed concern for the house elves, and getting them out of Hogwarts. Because that is the thing. I doubt Hermione would ever get Ron to join SPEW but Ron is decent, he cares for others, and he thinks about them, just as he was fretting about the ‘mudblood’ family earlier in the book even though he was super-injured himself. Fun foreshadowing btw, as at that point Hermione was looking at him super-tenderly, and with the elves...heeeee.
I love that it’s Hermione who after all makes the first move and runs to him and kisses him (heeeee, it’s like all her pent-up emotions exploded) and he kisses her back and lifts her off her feet *swooooooon* (tall guy/short girl eeeeee!) and when Harry asks if that is the time (as they are preparing for the last battle), Ron is so unabashed with his ‘it’s now or never.’
And at the end, the epilogue, and they are married and have kids and…OK, this turned into a R/H post but whatever.
I would love to read a fic where Hermione introduces Ron to her parents ;)