ADMIN NOTE:
Previous Part
DO NOT TURN this thread into a shipping debate. I'll look over this and remove "debate-y" posts later. Those posts slipped through the net as the mod team was severely understaffed when this thread came out.
-gal-texter, 2Jun2008Harry and Hermione in “Deathly Hallows” (Part Five)
by Padfoot_Lives
This is the fifth and final part of ‘H/Hr in DH’, which covers everything from “Gringotts” to the Epilogue. A big thank you goes out to everyone who’s been reading this stuff from the beginning, and thanks for all the encouragement! I hope you like this finish; there’s some really great H/Hr to come: a lot of Harry Unable to Keep Away From Hermione’s Hand, some more PELT (Partnership, Equals, Love and Trust)…
(I’ve put in the page number but not chapter title. All the page numbers are from the UK/British edition of DH, but the extracts have mostly American spelling.)
Pg 419
… He chose not to repeat her own advice back to her, however; the eve of their attempted assault on Gringotts felt like the wrong moment to antagonize her.
Who says this relationship is so boring that they never have conflict? Here we have a bit of conflict, and, even more importantly, Harry (unlike, I’m afraid, Ron) doesn’t try to make it worse by annoying Hermione. He keeps silent (most unlike him) so as not to antagonize her.
Pg 420
As they had lost Perkins’s old tent on the night that the Snatchers caught them, Bill had lent them another one. It was now packed inside the beaded bag, which, Harry was impressed to learn, Hermione had protected from the Snatchers by the simple expedient of stuffing it down her sock.
Bloody hell, I’d give anything to have a brother who’s
impressed by the simple things I do! I’d be amazed if my brother even considers me intelligent, let alone is impressed by that alleged intelligence and even goes so far as to defend (repeatedly) my brains and ideas and loyalty from the attacks of his girlfriend…
Hermione’s such a lucky sister. I’m green with envy, I tell you!
Pg 423
‘Too polite,’ Harry whispered in Hermione’s ear as they passed out of the inn into the tiny backyard. ‘You need to treat people like they’re scum.’
Pg 425
‘He’s another Death Eater!’ breathed Griphook, and Harry sidled sideways to repeat the information into Hermione’s ear.
Love it, love it, love it! In fact, I’m almost swooning.
OK, so we know he
has to whisper in her ear so as to remain undetected. In fact, he has to be really,
really close to be able to speak soft enough that she’ll hear but no one else will. Has anyone considered the practical repercussions of this? Hermione is striding along, walking quite briskly. Harry catches up to her and, still in motion, leans forward to whisper right in her ear. Given the amount of movement happening here, there is a 150% (more like 200%) chance that his lips,
both times, brushed her skin, and probably not lightly or negligibly either.
Pg 435
‘Hermione,’ said Harry, as the clanking grew louder, ‘I’ve got to get up there, we’ve got to get rid of it – ’
She raised her wand, pointed it at Harry and whispered, ‘Levicorpus.'
Again, did Ron vanish somewhere along the way? Is he not good enough to be asked to do the spell instead? For all the attention they give him, the poor guy might as well have flown to Japan.
Pg 437
The scales were as hard as steel: it did not even seem to feel him. He stretched out an arm; Hermione hoisted herself up; Ron climbed up behind them, and a second later, the dragon became aware that it was untethered.
Because Hermione, a woman who has been in plenty of dangerous situations and done hundreds of risky things,
needs help climbing up an oblivious dragon’s back.
But this doesn’t surprise me: it just reinforces what we’ve known since POA and OOTP: that Hermione is always willing to depend on Harry physically, and without even thinking, he instinctively reaches to help her whenever possible. It’s PELT and a bit of HUTKAFHH. They compensate for each other’s weaknesses, work in perfect tandem.
Pg 441
Hermione collapsed, coughing and spluttering. Though Harry could have happily lain down and slept, he staggered to his feet, drew out his wand and started casting the usual protective spells around them.
When Hermione doesn’t protect them, Harry does. And Ron? Again, wiped off the slate. After the hundreds of times they’ve done this, doesn’t
he know the spells as well? Why doesn’t
he do it, ever, that we see?
Pg 449
It was of Ron and Hermione that he thought as he whispered, ‘Expecto Patronum!’
If ever we poor, delusional idiots needed evidence that Harry is in love with Ginny and his happiest memories are of her, well, here it is.
Pg 454
‘Professor Dumbledore cared about Harry, very much,’ said Hermione in a low voice.
Pg 458
‘… How can you be sure you aren’t dispensable, just like my little sister?’
A shard of ice seemed to pierce Harry’s heart.
‘I don’t believe it. Dumbledore loved Harry,’ said Hermione.
Again, she won’t let anyone make Harry feel like crap. And she won’t let anyone make him feel as though he wasn’t loved. How many times does Hermione (and never, you’ll notice, Ron) have to do this before we accept how desperately and how much she loves Harry?
Pg 468
There was another noise behind them, and Harry turned. His heart seemed to fail: Ginny was now climbing through the hole in the wall, closely followed by Fred, George and Lee Jordan. Ginny gave Harry a radiant smile: he had forgotten, or had never fully appreciated, how beautiful she was, but he had never been less pleased to see her.
A seemingly completely H--->G moment that shows Harry’s profound love for her. I, however, see very different things here:
1. He’s not pleased to see her. Some may argue that it’s because she’ll be in danger as long as she’s near him, so we’ll overlook this for the time being.
2. His heart
fails when he sees her. It doesn’t
leap, or
soar. A ‘failing’ heart is definitely a negative thing, as a quote a little later on in the book (which I can’t find right now, but which has Harry’s heart ‘failing’ in response to a Death Eater attacking) shows.
3. The first thing he notices about her is her physical beauty—not how happy she makes him, not how brave and wonderful it was of her to come and risk herself—just her beauty. Does this not scream ‘shallow, adolescent relationship’ to anyone else?
4. He had ‘forgotten’ how beautiful she was. With Ginny and Harry, it will always be ‘out of sight, out of mind’. This relationship, in real life, would never have stood the test of time. JKR wanted it to, so it did, and she has every right to make it happen that way. But I’m afraid it’s just not believable (
unless, of course, Harry sticks with it because he lost the woman he really wanted).
Pg 469
‘They can help.’ [Ron] dropped his voice and said, no that none of them could hear but Hermione, who stood between them…
Harry looked from Ron to Hermione, who murmured, ‘I think Ron’s right. We don’t even know what we’re looking for, we need them.’ And when Harry looked unconvinced, ‘You don’t have to do everything alone, Harry.’
Firstly, this is just one page after Ginny’s arrival, and he hasn’t given her a second thought or even said a word to her. Secondly, call me crazy, but there’s something symbolic about attention being drawn to Hermione standing
between Harry and Ron (it’s usually Harry in the middle). Third, it would appear that Harry doesn’t trust Ron half as much as he does Hermione. Classic PELT; Ron says something, and Harry doesn’t accept it unless Hermione agrees that it’s a good idea. Fourth, she assures him, as always, that he isn’t alone.
She’ll always be there. After all, she’s the only one who has always been there.
Pg 486
[Ginny’s] eyes met Harry’s for the first time. She looked at him beseechingly, but he shook his head and she turned away bitterly.
It just screams ‘true love’, doesn’t it? Harry doesn’t seem to have a problem antagonizing
Ginny and he doesn’t seem to mind when she ‘turns away bitterly’. Gosh, his feelings for her must be overpowering.
Pg 488
‘Where’s Ron?’ asked Harry. ‘Where’s Hermione?’
Pg 489
However, as Harry skirted the walls, scanning the Gryffindor table for Ron and Hermione…
Pg 490
Harry moved up the Hall alongside the Gryffindor table, still looking for Ron and Hermione.
Pg 491
‘Where are Ron and Hermione?’
‘Haven’t you found—?’ began Mr Weasley, looking worried.
Harry spends at least ten pages looking for them. In fact, his first spoken words in a long time demand to know where they are. Not only does this show the depth of his affection for them, but isn’t it possible that Harry is not only worried, but also a little
upset about the two of them disappearing without him? As far as he knows, they could be off doing
anything… he wouldn’t like that idea, would he?
Pg 500
And then he skidded round a final corner and with a yell of mingled relief and fury he saw them: Ron and Hermione, both with their arms full of large, curved, dirty yellow objects, Ron with a broomstick under his arm.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Harry shouted.
Anyone who thinks Ginny could ever mean as much to him as these two do… well, they… er… need to go back and reread, I think.
Pg 502
There was a clatter as the Basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.
‘Is this the moment?’ Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. ‘OI! There’s a war going on here!’
Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.
‘I know, mate,’ said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, ‘so it’s now or never, isn’t it?’
‘Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?’ Harry shouted.
It’s quite a sweet kiss, to be fair, though it’s a tad too ‘Hollywood-ish’ for my taste. Not to mention that the fact that Ron is suddenly defender of S.P.E.W is stretching belief a little. However, several things strike me here:
1. If this is not Ron and Hermione’s first kiss, what’s the big deal? However, if it
is their first kiss (and I think it is, because they make such a big deal of it), then it’s enormously significant, isn’t it? They’ve been ‘together’ for months now! Why hasn’t Hermione kissed him until now?
Because her heart wasn’t completely in it.
2. So why does she kiss him now? Personally, I think that the combination of her feelings for Ron (and we know she has
some) and the overpowering ecstasy that
finally, he seems to understands one of the most important things to her, pushes her. Let’s not forget, too, that she believes she’s lost Harry for good and she probably realizes she’s got to try and move on. She’ll always love him, but she’s trying to love someone else now.
Also, please note that Ron’s the only one who speaks to Harry right after the kiss. I don’t think Hermione can face him properly.
3. Harry doesn’t like it. He flat-out doesn’t: why else would he interrupt them, and then
shout at Ron? Bit of an extreme reaction, wouldn’t you say?
Pg 507
[Hermione’s Stunner] only missed because Malfoy pulled [Crabbe] out of the way.
‘It’s that Mudblood!
Avada Kedavra!”
Harry saw Hermione dive aside and his fury that Crabbe had aimed to kill wiped all else from his mind.
Oh, Crabbe, now you’ve done it. Trying to kill Hermione pushed Harry to his limit, and he’s not going to stop until you’re dead… wait a second. You die two pages later! How very coincidental! I wonder what Harry would’ve done to you if you hadn’t inadvertently set yourself on fire.
Pg 512
Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his life…
And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three red-headed men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood.
Harry’s fear. When he hears a ‘terrible cry’, he assumes someone is dead and the thought frightens him more than anything ever has in his life. We have to assume that the cry is Ron’s, because only hearing
Ron express that kind of pain would frighten Harry so much. I believe he thought, for one awful moment, that Ron had found
Hermione dead.
The way the above passage is written is interesting, because it draws attention to Harry’s fear, followed by ‘…’ and then ‘
And Hermione was struggling to her feet’, implying that the person Harry was looking for was
her. He looked for her frantically, terrified, praying Ron hadn’t found her dead.
So the thought of Hermione’s death frightened Harry more than anything else ever had in his life. This supports what I’ve said before:
she’s the only one he can’t lose.He grabs her hand. He doesn’t need to do this. There’s absolutely no logical reason for him to do this, unless he really and truly is in love with her. I think he does it now simply because he’s so relieved that she’s alive. It’s a very instinctive reaction to touch something you believed lost, just to make sure it’s real and solid.
Does anyone else wonder what Harry’s Boggart is now? A dead Hermione, perhaps?
Pg 513
… he and Ron had both grabbed Hermione and pulled her to the ground.
It could have been just Ron. JKR could have written it that way. But, no, instead we got the determination of
two men, both of whom are in love with the woman, to protect her.
Pg 514
Pushing Hermione ahead of him with Ron, Harry stooped to seize Fred’s body under the armpits.
She obviously lingers with him while Ron runs as ordered. Harry pushes her to go ahead, protecting her, and stays to get Fred and Percy.
Pg 514-515
…He wanted to fight, to punish them… and above all make sure, make quite sure, that Ginny was not – but he could not permit that idea to form in his mind –
He’s worried about Ginny. Thank heavens; I’d have been genuinely upset if Harry had spent nineteen years of his life with a woman he had
no feelings for whatsoever. But the fact that he won’t think of her dead is not hugely significant; we have almost the exact same quote several chapters before, where Harry can’t bear to think of Luna in Azkaban.
…[Hermione] turned to Harry.
‘You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he’ll have the snake with him, won’t he? Do it, Harry – look inside him!’
Why was it so easy? Because his scar had been burning for hours, yearning to show him Voldemort’s thoughts? He closed his eyes on her command…
She keeps him on track, and he obeys her. PELT.
Pg 517
‘Harry, you get the Cloak on,’ said Hermione, ‘Never mind us – ’
But he threw it over all three of them.
I don’t even have any words for this. Could she possibly love him more? Or he her? ‘Never mind us’, she says. Does she care that
Ron will be at risk, too, if he’s not under the Cloak as well? *snorts* A sister who puts her brother before the love of her life? Even Leia would never have done it, and she
kissed Luke!
Pg 521
‘RUN!’ Harry roared; the night was full of hideous yells and blows as the giants wrestled, and he seized Hermione’s hand and tore down the steps into the grounds, Ron bringing up the rear.
D’you know what this just
screams? It’s the same ‘save one thing from a burning building’ mentality that Harry employs in the DoM, when he seizes a handful of Hermione’s robes instead of anyone else’s. It’s love. He tears into the unknown, and takes the only thing he doesn’t want to be separated from or lose. The fact that Ron sticks with them (behind them) is incidental. Harry, in a moment of panic, doesn’t think to pull Ron with him as well.
Pg 528
Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was but did not know what to do –
A flask, conjured from thin air, was thrust into his shaking hands by Hermione.
They work together. PELT. Ron is… well, I have no idea where he is. Maybe he’s crawled back out of the tunnel and is looking for Luna (*grins*)…
Pg 556
Ron and Hermione seemed a long way away, in a far-off country; he felt as though he had parted from them long ago. There would be no goodbyes and no explanations, he was determined of that.
The canon evidence to support my interpretation of why Harry gives up Hermione: he believes he’s going to die. He has always sort of believed it, and that is why he isn't very surprised when he finds it out through the Pensieve.
Pg 557
People were moving around, trying to comfort each other, drinking, kneeling beside the dead, but he could not see any of the people he loved, no hint of Hermione, Ron, Ginny or any of the other Weasleys, no Luna.
And finally, the quote that completely blew me away. The order is ‘Ron and Hermione’. In statement, Ron comes first. It’s been established that way for seven books. It continues that way over the remainder of this book. It’s always said, uttered and written as ‘Ron and Hermione’. Yet here, this one time, when Harry thinks of the people he loves,
the order is reversed. Had the order been maintained, I wouldn’t have given this a second thought, because he loves them all, yes. We accept that.
But Hermione comes first. I think this is the order in which he loves them, and the fact that Hermione, completely unexpectedly, comes before Ron, shows once and for all the distinction between them: he loves her more. Ron is his ‘brother’. Hermione is
not his ‘sister’; if she was, the order of ‘Ron, Hermione, Ginny, etc’ would have been kept.
In text, Ron comes first. In Harry’s heart, Hermione does.‘It’s got to be killed. Ron and Hermione know that, but just in case they – ’
The awfulness of that possibility smothered him for a moment, made it impossible to keep talking.
Contrast this to his reaction to the idea of imagining Ginny dead. There, it just wasn’t something he wanted to think about. Here, the idea of losing Ron and Hermione
smothers him, and, as we’ve just seen, Hermione will always be one step above Ron in Harry’s heart.
Pg 559
All those visits to Hagrid, and the gleam of the copper kettle on the fire, and Ron vomiting slugs, and Hermione helping him save Norbert…
The last memory in Harry’s mind, as he walks to the forest and to death, is of Hermione.
Pg 564
…and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look…
It troubles me that, from the way this is written, it’s implied that Bellatrix reminds Harry of Ginny. It must be real love, this. Harry’s always had a little bit of a thing for Bella, after all, hasn’t he?
Pg 577
‘Why did you have to make it so difficult?’
Dumbledore’s smile was tremulous.
‘I am afraid I counted on Miss Granger to slow you up, Harry…’
The only one of the people left behind who is mentioned in this chapter… and it’s Hermione. Dear Dumbledore, president of H/Hr Shippers United. In OOTP, he sent Hermione to Grimmauld Place to keep Harry from running away. In DH, he relies on her to keep Harry on the right path. Apparently, Dumbledore, a man who is remarkably wise and who recognizes true love when he sees it, perceives a certain special unbreakable bond between Harry and Hermione… we must be as delusional as he was. He was crazy to trust Snape, after all.
Pg 596
The fierce new sun dazzling the windows as they thundered towards him, and the first to reach him were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened him. Then Ginny, Neville and Luna were there…
Pg 597
Everywhere he looked he saw families reunited, and finally, he saw the two whose company he craved most.
Pg 598
But first he owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione, who had stuck with him for so long, and who deserved the truth.
Perfect moments that show just how ludicrous Harry’s relationship with Ginny must have seemed to him, in comparison to his love for his brother and for Hermione, the lover that wasn’t.
Pg 600
‘Are you sure?’ said Ron. There was the faintest trace of longing in his voice as he looked at the Elder Wand.
‘I think Harry’s right,’ said Hermione quietly.
JKR ends her book (the pre-epilogue chunk of it) with H/Hr on the same page, sharing the same view, and Ron… not. Funny way to foreshadow two marriages that don’t involve Harry and Hermione being together.
The EpilogueThe one thing about the epilogue that really irked me was how unrealistic it was, and I don’t mean H/G. I mean the entire notion that the wizarding world revolves around the Weasleys… that
really annoys me. It’s simply not reasonable. Even Teddy Lupin is now with a Weasley.
There are no real H/Hr quotes in the epilogue, but I think the entire thing can be significant to us. We’ve all noticed that the couples, H/G and R/Hr, seem to show no real affection to one another. Yes, Ron and Hermione tease one another a bit, and Ginny tells Harry that Albus will ‘be all right’, but that’s not much. There’s no mention of love here. No one ever says ‘I love you’ to their wife/husband. For a book that is supposed to focus so much on the power of love, this is a little startling. And, even more significantly, Harry and Hermione don’t say
anything to one another. Either this is a bad case of character manipulation, or a bad bit of editing...
or a certain amount of tension was supposed to come across. And why might that tension exist? Well… you fill in the blanks.
So, after everything we’ve looked at over five parts of this essay, I’m certain some of us must still be wondering: so why
didn’t it end H/Hr?
1. Because Ron loved Hermione, and Harry and Hermione cared too much about him to destroy him.
2. Because H/Hr, as we’ve seen, were always at cross-purposes.
3. Because the HP series is not about romance, and so, if it had ended H/Hr, their love would have overshadowed the fantasy of it. The romance in the book had to be diluted by casting the two most oft-seen characters with other people, so that the focus remained on the quest against Voldemort, and Harry’s journey into manhood.
4. Because, quite simply, JKR
wanted an R/Hr and H/G ending, and so she wrote it that way. We may not agree, but we have no right to demand that she justify her choices when this world belongs to her.
On a personal note: I’m glad H/Hr wasn’t brought to a happy, soppy conclusion. That would completely have diminished the ‘love one another, come what may’ power of it.
In conclusion, I think I can say that we
all won. The R/Hr and H/G shippers got their fairytale (albeit slightly contrived) ending, and if they’re all delighted about it, then, I’m glad for them. After years of shipping wars, I’m glad they feel like they’ve won, and I’m even gladder that
we feel like
we’ve won. Because while we didn’t get fairytales, we got a beautifully written, wonderfully developed, powerful and poignant love. I’m sure OBHWF-shippers will disagree, but as far as
I’m concerned, H/Hr was the greatest love story
I’ve read since “Wuthering Heights”, even if it was a seemingly tragic one.
After all, they were bonded for life.
Sources for ‘H/Hr in DH’: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by JK Rowling (all rights belong to her and to Scholastic and Bloomsbury)
Lyrics to “Wherever You Will Go” by The Calling (all rights belong to them)
ADMIN NOTE:
Previous Part
DO NOT TURN this thread into a shipping debate. I'll look over this and remove "debate-y" posts later. Those posts slipped through the net as the mod team was severely understaffed when this thread came out.
I will also move posts about the H/H playlist started below:
-gal-texter, 2Jun2008
Below, I’ve added an H/Hr Playlist for ‘Deathly Hallows’. I’ve specified the chapter/scene that the songs apply to, and put the initial of the character whose point of view the song is in into parentheses. I didn’t want to paste the song lyrics here (it would have been too much), so just Google the titles if you don’t know the songs already.
These are just the songs I hear in my head when I read certain sections of the book:
Padfoot’s Pumpkin Playlist< I've moved her playlist here. - gal-texter Sep 2008>
)
Padfoot you so ROCK!!! 
I must be laughing at such cluelessness. ROFL!
Hehe... Well needless to say I would have rather had Luna be with Harry than Ginny. Or if it was HHR and RL I would have been fine too. 
). Now I dont believe that he would have told Hermione this so there is deceit in their relationship. This may be classed as a white lie but disharmony has to begin somewhere.