Full “Wonderland” Interview Reveals Ron/Hermione Shippers Can Relax

Feb 07, 2014

Posted by: Melissa Anelli

News

The full text of the Wonderland issue that caused a Ron/Hermione vs. Harry/Hermione shipping riot this week is now out, and rumors of the death of the canon pairing have been greatly exaggerated. J.K. Rowling repeats previously made comments that there are certain characteristics between Harry and Hermione that may have them better suited, but does not indicate a wish to pair them off or any regret over how she wrote the books. Emma Watson and J.K. Rowling simply discuss the hypothetical post-Hogwarts world and what Ron and Hermione’s relationship might have looked like.
Rowling said that regardless of their issues, Ron and Hermione “would probably be fine.”
Ron “needs to works on his self-esteem issues and she [Hermione] needs to work on being a little less critical,”she said in the article.
Rowling admitted that she felt drawn to Harry and Hermione in the tent scene as she wrote the novel (a fact first revealed in this book).
The full text of the article can be read at MuggleNet; shipping excerpts are below:

I thought we should discuss Hermione… I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times but now that you have written the books, do you have a new perspective on how you relate to Hermione and the relationship you have with her or had with her?

I know that Hermione is incredibly recognisable to a lot of readers and yet you don’t see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine. She is part of me, although she is not wholly me. I think that is how I might have appeared to people when I was younger, but that is not really how I was inside.

What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.

Ah.

I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.

I don’t know. I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.

Yes exactly.

And vice versa.

It was a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it… I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility. I can’t believe we are saying all of this ’ this is Potter heresy!

I know, it is heresy.

In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn’t told [Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.

That is just so interesting because when I was doing the scene I said to David [Heyman]: “This isn’t in the book, she didn’t write this”. I’m not sure I am comfortable insinuating something however subtle it is!

Yes, but David and Steve ’ they felt what I felt when writing it.

That is so strange.

And actually I liked that scene in the film, because it was articulating something I hadn’t said but I had felt. I really liked it and I thought that it was right. I think you do feel the ghost of what could have been in that scene.

It’s a really haunting scene. It’s funny because it really divided people. Some people loved that scene and some people really didn’t.

Yes, some people utterly hated it. But that is true of so many really good scenes in books and films; they evoke that strong positive/negative feeling. I was fine with it, I liked it.

Oh, maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counseling, you know. I wonder what happens at wizard marriage counseling? They’ll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.

I think it makes sense to me that Ron would make friends with the most famous wizard in the school because I think life presents to you over and over again your biggest and most painful fear ’ until you conquer it. It just keeps coming up.

T

hat is so true, it has happened in my own life. The issue keeps coming up because you are drawn to it and you are putting yourself in front of it all the time. At a certain point you have to choose what to do about it and sometimes conquering it is choosing to say: I don’t want that anymore, I’m going to stop walking up to you because there is nothing there for me. But yes, you’re so right, that’s very insightful! Ron’s used to playing second fiddle. I think that’s a comfortable role for him, but at a certain point he has to be his own man, doesn’t he?

Yes and until he does it is unresolved. It is unfinished business. So maybe life presented this to him enough times until he had to make a choice and become the man that Hermione needs.

Just like her creator, she has a real weakness for a funny man. These uptight girls, they do like them funny.
They do like them funny, they need them funny.

It’s such a relief from being so intense yourself ’ you need someone who takes life, or appears to take life, a little more light heartedly.

An excerpt of the interview published in The Sunday Times on Feb. 1 caused a controversy when Rowling said she “wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment.”
“For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron,” Rowling said.
Many fans took this to mean that Rowling had changed her mind and would have preferred Harry and Hermione as a pairing. It resulted in shipping wars intense enough to give some of us flashbacks to 2005.





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