Ros's Drabble: "The Last Piece of the Puzzle"
Yes, I'm still working on the drabble requests from January. Whenever a longer story idea pops into my head I get distracted, but I do come back to these, and I'll eventually finish them.
girlyswot asked for "an HP drabble with characters of your choosing to the prompt: Pure Fluff." This was a challenge, as Ros knows, for fluff doesn't come naturally to ( Read more... )
Many fans are with you on that, Ron. :-)
Okay, I had to say that - anti-canon fan here, in case you've forgotten :-) - but seriously, this seems to be a perfect sequel or accompaniment to a theory that I think St. Margarets put up a fair while ago. She compared R/Hr to a "knight's journey" - something like that - equating Ron with a medieval knight who must accomplish various tasks to win his lady's hand. Do you remember that post of hers?
Anyway, your explicit mention of the 'puzzle' seems to map straight into that.
Myself, since I dislike R/Hr, I think the whole "knight's journey" - or the 'puzzle' in your drabble here - doesn't make much sense. Just WHY did Hermione apparently fixate on Ron as her chosen one, way back in fourth/third/second year - depending on what 'anvil sized' hints you notice - and then placidly wait until Won Won had gone through all the hoops, accomplished the Knight's tasks, fit all the pieces of the puzzle? Given that such a model proves that he failed to meet her standards for all of that time? It's never made much sense to me.
I've often included in my own anti-R/Hr rants how Hermione had apparently made a 'list' - my analogue to your 'puzzle' and St. Margaret's Quest - of Everything Ron Needs To Do To Be An Acceptable Boyfriend (the making of a list being formulaic Granger). With the aid of "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches" she probably ticked off quite a few entries in that list in the seventh book ... and then finally we have the house-elf thing:
Great, I can tick off "compassion for the elves", so that leaves ... ohmygosh ... that's the last item on my list ... I CAN KISS HIM NOW!"
Which left me overall unimpressed with R/Hr, but there are other reasons why I dislike that pairing and so have a negative slant on the list/puzzle/Quest thing.
Anyway, I thought it was most interesting how you focused on my 'list', and St. Margaret's Quest - I *do* hope I've remembered the details of that post of hers correctly! - in this drabble!
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I don't think she had a list, exactly. I think that Hermione 's heart is complicated and demanding, because it has to negotiate so often with her head and her insecurities. I think that she was attracted to Ron on an elemental (sexual?) level very early on, admired his loyalty, his courage and his affectionate nature, understood instinctively that he had things she lacked (humor, earthiness, love of pleasure for its own sake), but still held back. She held back because she needed to know that he was really a kindred spirit -- that they cared about the same things. To the extent that he displayed callousness about people she saw as so obviously downtrodden and in need of help, she couldn't ultimately imagine herself with him. I think she was waiting for him to grow up.
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I guess all of that early Ron attraction was hidden with the rest of the background noise, masked by all of those bitter fights love spats she had with Ron. :-)
I think she was waiting for him to grow up.
I think we all were, Ken. :-)
The thing is - even in the last book, where it was obvious that Rowling was trying to mature Ron in a hurry (the "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches" manual was a neat crutch) - he still ends up as lacking in your "kindred spirit" stakes. Hermione was aghast at his unethical solution to the Sword/goblin problem, for example. And even in the epilogue he's practising deceit against his purported wife.
Ah well, you've heard it all before ... you just place lesser priority on that negative evidence than I. Which I think is the secret to OBHWF. :-)
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