So, I usually do not feed into the argument that Harry and Ginny’s relationship came out of nowhere claim because first of all, I’ve always seen it as a misadvised, unjustified argument that stemmed from what the movies presented. However, since I’m quarantined in my house and I’m a social psychologist in training, I questioned whether or not there was a way to quantify Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter’s relationship to find whether or not this “out of nowhere” claim is justified.
To develop my hypothesis, I did a literature review from social psychology academic, empirical studies on infatuation, relationships, and love in both teenage samples and young adult samples. From that review, I found a popular theory in infatuation which states that what we deem as “crushes” develop at an exponential rate (an example depicted below).
Think of the x-axis (horizontal line) as the time passed. Think of the y-axis (vertical line) as the number of times a person thought of the person/item of interest. The red line is what we’re interested in. In the exponential graph below, as time passes, the rate of growth in number of thoughts increased “exponentially.” So in a way, think of the corner of the red line as the point in which the subject has identified that they have a crush on the person of interest. After that crush has been identified, the number of thoughts related to that person increases substantially due to the addictiveness and fascination associated with infatuation. Of course this makes sense when we think about our obsession with the Harry Potter franchise. The more we realized we loved it, the more we thought about it. (Or I assume you’ve had this experience being that you’ve read this post to this point).
Hypothesis and Measurement:
So how does this relate to Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley? My hypothesis was that Harry’s crush on Ginny would develop in a similar pattern throughout the six books leading up to their first kiss. To test this, I quantified Harry and Ginny’s relationship through the number of pages the word “Ginny” appeared in the books. Now hear me out: the books for the most part are told from Harry’s point of view (although written in third person) with exceptions in chapters such as the first chapter in the Goblet of Fire, and first chapter in the Half Blood Prince. Therefore, every time the word “Ginny” is mentioned reflects the number of times Harry acknowledges Ginny’s presence in the situation/setting. The number of times Ginny’s name appears can also relate to the strength of her association (or friendship) with Harry, which in my belief is vital in the understanding of Harry and Ginny’s relationship development.
Limitations of the measurement that should be considered before we discuss the results: (1) since I’m using the number of PAGES that Ginny is mentioned, this number could be different from book to book depending on year of printing, size of the book, size of the font, etc, (2) “Ms. Weasley” or “Ron’s sister” and similar references were not counted, and (3) I used pages because I thought using the number of times Ginny’s name appeared was influenced by dialogue/relevance to the scene. Obviously Ginny’s name will appear more in scenes that she is the focal point of (aka Chamber of Secrets) which is hard to compare with in books where she is not the focal point (like in Prisoner of Azkaban). I hoped by standardizing the number to the number of pages, we’d get a more comparable number that we can use to analyze between book to book.
Results
The following graphic shows the results:
So, was my hypothesis supported? It’s hard to tell.
Ginny Weasley was mentioned on three pages in the first book which makes sense; they hadn’t met, and she was only seen on platform 9 3/4 in the beginning and the end of the book.
In the Chamber of Secrets, she was the focal point of the climax of the story so obviously she would appear in more pages. Interestingly enough, “Ginny” was mentioned on 25 pages before she was taken to the Chamber at the end of the book.
Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire makes sense because she was not an intricate part of the plots of those books. She is also in the year below Harry so she was not in class with him and therefore is not in many settings where she would just be off-handedly mentioned as being present.
The Order of the Phoenix is the surprising finding. Her name was present on more pages in the fifth book than it was in the actual book where Harry confesses his infatuation for her. This is the portion that really throws the wrench in my hypothesis. However, after thinking about it more, it makes sense, and here’s why. Have you ever watched tv and noticed that the same commercial is on at every commercial break? This is purposeful because of the repetitive exposure effect; the more you see something, the more likely you are to be inclined to purchase that item. There’s a similar effect in infatuation research; the more positive experiences you have with a person, the more you are likely to develop positive feelings for that person (either friendship-related or romance-related feelings). Therefore, it makes sense that Harry would develop some sort of relationship with Ginny when she’s present in his life that many times in a year (127 times). Is it positive? For the most part, his experiences with Ginny in the fifth book are positive in that his experiences with her, even if they are negative in nature like in the Ministry, they are not negative between Ginny and Harry.
Now why is she mentioned fewer times in the sixth book? After re-scanning through the book, there are many more scenes in which Harry is looking at Voldemort’s memories with Dumbledore which take up a lot of the book. That makes sense, of course, because that is the main point of the book. Ginny is still mentioned on 1/6 of the pages in the sixth book. While in the Order of the Phoenix, Ginny is mentioned on 1/8 of the pages in the book (it’s 200 pages longer than the Half Blood Prince).
Now, in terms of plot, what would dictate the reason behind why there is such a spike in Ginny’s presence during the fifth book? How about this:
“Hermione told me to get on with life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more--myself.” (Pg 647 in Half Blood Prince)
Although never explicitly stated, it can be inferred that this conversation happened in the summer before Order of the Phoenix when Hermione and Ginny were rooming together at 12 Grimmauld Place. After that, Ginny made the effort to relax a bit more and show Harry that she has relaxed more around him. This means that she would have more positive, comfortable experiences with Harry which Harry might take more notice in.
In addition, it’s important to note that there are a lot of moments that are left out of the books. Obviously, JK Rowling wouldn’t include every single day of the school year; that would make the books incredibly long and cause the books to lose their focus. This means that moments like the exploding snaps game Harry and Ginny had together after the chamber which we learned about in Cursed Child, or the enjoyable afternoons in the sixth book, were not present to include in these results. Also, more mundane events where interactions between these characters could have occurred, such as daily meals where nothing of importance to the plot happens, were also left out because how many times do you really want to read about Harry’s breakfast habits? These events could also show how many more occurrences Harry and Ginny had together and would change how these results appear.
In conclusion, Harry and Ginny’s relationship development makes sense when viewing it from a social psychology stance. Their relationship did not occur out of nowhere, in fact it makes sense that their relationship would develop in the way that it did when analyzing the number of events Harry and Ginny experience together pre-infatuation. In other words, his infatuation developed because of how much time he spent with Ginny in his fifth year. This of course does not even touch on the attractive qualities within each of them that make them compatible in the first place.
Continue arguing all you like about the development of Harry and Ginny’s relationship, but to me, it was done realistically and with common sense when it comes to driving the main plot of the story. I’m logging off and will not discuss this anymore. (I know I didn’t cite the social psychology studies but it’s tumblr and I really don’t feel like doing that right now)
Ginny didn’t know what she expected after their tense agreement next to the kitchen sink. Perhaps that Harry would whisk her away to a variety of places full of deep import and emotional significance. Or that an array of friends and acquaintances would parade through the sitting room at steady intervals to provide personal anecdotes and affectionate recollections.
What she got instead was a loose routine that was neither earth-shattering nor particularly interesting.
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thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!
i’ll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.
they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couples’ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.
i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like i’m just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.
as a result, i think that it’s ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to ‘become worthy’ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what they’re set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.
because ronald weasley? he’s an icon. and he doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.
there are multiple reasons for this - ron’s narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleys’ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ron’s flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermione’s (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harry’s (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.
in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ron’s sense of humour isn’t indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that he’s the most emotionally aware of the trio.
ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:
That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.
ron’s inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isn’t flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.
[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione aren’t… i can’t help you.]
but let’s look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:
their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but he’s also good at recognising that hermione’s tendency to argue isn’t intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - it’s just the way she works through feelings and problems. he’s far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than he’s given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when she’s trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.
that ron and hermione’s tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because it’s something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesn’t understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermione’s. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.
[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]
they each provide validation the other needs. it’s clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. i’m always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i don’t think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that she’s anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as she’s often written to be.
and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermione’s parents’ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with them. hermione’s obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that she’s not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.
[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that they’re familiar with doesn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]
ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemort’s locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his mother’s emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesn’t know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, molly’s desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.
he also suffers while at hogwarts from being ‘harry potter’s best friend’, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ron’s jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harry’s saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ron’s strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though he’s achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.
the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harry’s involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.
because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. it’s true that ron certainly doesn’t acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermione’s relationship with viktor krum (it’s because he’s bi and doesn’t know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when she’s trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ron’s toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape… who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ‘not prone to jealousy’...
but i think it’s important to point out several things in defence of ron’s jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - she’s upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesn’t think he’s being possessive, she thinks he’s being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ron’s crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.
but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.
and, on this point, i think it’s worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more ‘powerful’ one. [it’s always a bit trite to say ‘but what if the genders were reversed?’, but actually that’s not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they don’t get in trouble. she doesn’t nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.
and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.
hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).
ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (it’s why he’s so good at chess). he’s a pragmatist. he’s the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think it’s worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.
and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeak’s defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasn’t done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harry’s tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.
ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesn’t work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that she’s won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a ‘silly little girl’ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.
ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.
this took me NINE MILLION YEARS i'll explain why another time (and typo check in the morning). i will also share proper graphic art but the meme image for this chapter is:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I don't get how people can think The Golden Trio's relationship to be any less significant than Hinny.
As a romance, it is intrinsically different, or so I understand, but it is so full of amatonormativity to assume that Ginny is so much more important to him than Ron and Hermione, especially in the series. Later on in life, Ginny is his wife, his life partner and the mother of his children, so of course that relationship is heightened to a point, but Ron and Hermione are still his son's godparents, his godchildren's parents, his best and dearest friends, the people he trusts most in the world, his family. And I don't see how they could ever drift apart??
Harry thought of Ginny right before he died (which I love so much oh my god), but he thinks of Ron and Hermione when he has to produce a Patronus. He desperately wants to keep Ginny safe because of his love for her, but he trusts Ron and Hermione to be beside him and support him because of his love for them. He thinks of Ginny as his future at the end of Deathly Hallows, but he explains things to Ron and Hermione first, because they are his present, his support system, his rockbed.
Obviously, I'm not saying their friendship is more important than his and Ginny's relationship. It isn't. But vice versa isn't true either.
If push came to shove, and this is my opinion, he would pick Ginny over Ron and Hermione, even though it would literally tear him apart, because well, she is his life partner and the mother of his children.
But no one would ever ask him to do that so it doesn't matter.
Harry just loves Ron and Hermione and Ginny so incredibly freaking much, and it's just ridiculous to me when someone suggests he loves one more than the others.
As someone who loves Ginny, don't you think Ginny deserves better than Harry?
No. To be fair, tough, it'll forever be a better argument against hinny than the idea that Harry deserves better than Ginny.
The only actual "problem"
The thing is, the story ends with Harry having a giant debt towards Ginny, but that part about Harry wanting to talk with Ginny for hours, days, and years, is meant to make the reader understand that the debt will be extinguished.
The reason why the reunion between Harry and Ginny can't be shown is this: the second Harry goes back to Ginny he's not moving from there but the plot of the Chosen One needs to end with Ron and Hermione, they are the Chosen One's companions.
That dichotomy that exists in HBP between the Chosen One and Harry continues in DH, and as in HBP, Ginny is associated with Harry. Every time you see Harry Potter thinking about Ginny in DH, it is Harry prevailing over the Chosen One.
Ginny is the most important person to Harry, this is shown a billion of times in the last two books but to the Chosen One? Well, not only she is not his companion, she is a bit of a pain in the ass. She is a living representation of everything that exists outside of killing Voldemort. He is not supposed to think about her.
It's what Ron doesn't understand when he accuses Harry of not caring about Ginny. That accusation shakes Harry so much that he starts wishing not that Ginny is thinking of him but that she knows he is thinking of her. You could also see that as the moment Harry starts acknowledging the existence of that debt we were talking about.
That said, the actual very last scene of the series is between Harry and Ginny and it's a very explicit parallel to the first time Harry saw Ginny in 1991. Again, with the last chapter, we see the end of the Chosen One story, but Harry's one? That ends in the Epilogue with Ginny. She is never meant to be his companion during the war, but his future. As I said many times before, Ginny has her own story, what kind of equal to Harry could she ever be if she was dragged into the role of his assistant? Not that it would actually work with Ginny's personality, you'd need to re-title the books.
Is he good for her?
That whole matter aside, Harry is great for Ginny.
He shares her love for Quidditch, and for both of them it's a representation of freedom, they have the same values, priorities the same things, and have the same way of processing their emotions. Ginny, who hates to be vulnerable because it always comes at a cost for her, finds in Harry someone that since he was twelve never made her pay for that vulnerability.
Ginny finds in Harry not only someone she can make laugh or that can make her laugh but someone she can build jokes with, a teammate. It's also important to note that humour is part of their communication style, they use it also in highly emotional conversations. It's not that obvious to find someone you share that with.
Harry has the power of grounding and calming Ginny, something that very clearly no one else can do.
He displays a willingness to show himself vulnerable that he never really offers anyone else (with maybe the exception of Sirius on some level).
His overprotectiveness balances out her recklessness. Harry's overprotectiveness would suffocate anyone that doesn't have Ginny's hatred for being protected, and in the same way, Ginny's excessive need of being independent would stray her away from anyone who can't contrast her on that.
He seeks light and joy and is kind after all the darkness he is gone through which is the same thing Ginny does. Their connection to Voldemort is a shared experience for sure but it's not what makes them compatible. It's the fact that they respond in the same way to it. It's crazy how people take that for granted. And on that note, they have the same emotional resilience.
And also, a very underappreciated thing, Harry breaks out of his bubble of self-centrism for her and actually observes someone else's life. Not because there's some mystery to solve but because it's Ginny and observing her surrounded by friends, learning about how she influences other people's lives, the relationships with her brothers, is worth it.
In the end...
I think believing after a first read of the books that Ginny deserves better is a reasonable perception but overall an incorrect one.
Summary: A childhood spent among them: the beasts, the wild things of their world. Coming back, coming-of-age. (The story of Ginny’s seventh year, or — how the youngest Weasley won the Hanging Out With Hagrid Award).
Canon compliant, multi-chapter, post-war, non-linear narrative, flashbacks. PS/SS through post-DH (1981-1999). Harry/Ginny.
🌳 Orchards
Summary: The orchard is a wild, thousand-flower, crumpled-gate, fall-down-fence sort of place, where things grow that you’ve never asked for, that you’d never expect. Summer of ’96, the story of something flowery he thought he might have smelled at the Burrow.
Canon-compliant, oneshot, summer between OotP and HBP. Non-linear narrative, flashbacks/flash-forwards to DH. Harry/Ginny.
💭 think / hope
Kill your darlings, push them out to sea // Harry and Ginny's first evening apart after the breakup.
Canon compliant, oneshot, missing moment, post-HBP. Harry/Ginny. Written for Hinny Microfic April 2023 days 13 & 14.
metas 💫
Harry's thoughts of Ginny in the Forest (and Ginny's goodbye)
Harry and Ginny's shared experience of going to their deaths
Harry and Ginny at Shell Cottage
Ginny and the Veil
Ginny and Dean's relationship
Harry's postwar relationship with Ron and Hermione vs. with Ginny
Remus as seen by other characters
Ginny and the poem
Fred's death
The Dursleys' treatment of Harry
headcanons ☁️
Harry and Ginny's careers, home and married life
Harry and Ginny's flat in London
Harry and Ginny getting back together after the war
Harry and Ginny dating other people if one of them died
‘Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you... I wanted you to have something to remember me by.' - DH, p. 99 (UK edition)
Here I am, on a rainy Thursday, doing re-reads for some writing and thinking about the parallels between Harry and Ginny's kiss on his birthday, and Harry’s thoughts of Ginny as he goes to his death.
I’m thinking differently about Ginny’s motivations for the kiss these days. I used to think about her words to Harry that morning, and the act of kissing him, as a promise she’ll wait for when he comes back. Lately, I’m wondering if it’s not something sadder, and more profound. I think what Ginny does on Harry’s seventeenth is the act of a person who is starting to process the fact that the person she loves is likely going to his death — that he might not be coming back. It's a scene of a person bracing for grief and thinking about love after death, and it will set the stage for how Harry meets his own death in the Forest.
So here’s a much-too-long meta to help me think through these ideas - about the kiss, Ginny’s suspicions about Harry’s fate, and what it means that Harry returns to the memory of Ginny at the end of his life. (Stick the kettle on for this one and if you worked this all out long ago before me, just give me an eye roll and forgive me).
I’ve always taken Ginny's words to Harry before their kiss at face value. I thought of it not quite as a fun scene - it’s certainly sad - but sweet, a little sexy, and sort of reckless, even a bit mischievous on Ginny’s part.
It’s the birthday of the boy Ginny loves. They’re not together anymore. She knows he's going away. She wants to give him a birthday present, but she doesn't want to give him something he has to haul around or might lose. She does want to let him know that, despite their separation, her feelings are still the same. She craves a moment with him before he goes. She is still in love with him, she is deeply attracted to him, and part of her still feels a bit possessive. Although she’s not really concerned Harry’s going to crack on with some Veela, she does want him to have a memento of their time together. She wants him to have a happy memory, of physical intimacy and emotional comfort, to keep him going while he's away, to feel less alone.
Most of all, I used to think of the kiss (and whatever Ginny imagined might come after the kiss) as a promise. I still love you. Even though we’re not together and I respect why you have to go, I’m still all in on this. I’ll wait for you for when you come back. I want you to have the memory of this, as proof.
Harry’s reveal
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think about the context of when this kiss happens, after Harry and Ginny's last conversation before his birthday. It's the one a few days before, when Harry and Ginny are laying the table for dinner, and Harry lets slip to Ginny what he, Ron and Hermione will be doing when they leave:
'‘And then what does she think’s going to happen?’ Harry muttered. ‘Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?’
He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.‘So it’s true?’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do?
‘I - not - I was joking,’ said Harry evasively. (DH, 78-9, UK edition)
This is a desperately sad scene, but it’s also an important moment. Harry, so used to having his guard down with Ginny, realises he’s accidentally confessed something big: that he’s going on the run to try and kill Voldemort himself, with Ron and Hermione’s help.
Ginny is shaken by this. As a character, she tends to either take things in her stride, or yells first, processes later. But this catches her off guard. Her words suggest there has been speculation about what it is the three of them are going off to do (‘So it’s true?’ suggests that Ginny, and perhaps other members of her family or the Order, have been speculating about this for some time). But both she and Harry realise here that he’s flippantly confirmed something huge that Ginny did not already know for sure. He’s spoken aloud the task is that Dumbledore has left him.
It is a sign of how close Harry feels to Ginny, how safe he feels in her company, and how difficult he finds managing keeping secrets from her, that he lets this slip. He won’t come as close to telling the truth to anyone else, even people he trusts. The scene before this, in his conversation with Mrs Weasley, he didn’t let on nearly as much (though he admits that he found affirming the importance of secrecy difficult when he looked at Mrs Weasley and saw Ginny’s eyes staring back at him):
‘Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,’ mumbled Harry. ‘Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.’
‘What sort of ‘stuff’?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t—’
‘Well, frankly I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Granger would agree!’ said Mrs. Weasley.
Harry had been afraid of the “concerned parent” attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help…
‘Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley (…) I didn’t misunderstand,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It’s got to be me.’ (DH, 77-8)
Later, he’ll also refuse to give any information to Lupin, for the same reason.
'‘Can you confide in me what the mission is?’
Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick but greying hair, and wished that he could return a different answer.
‘I can’t, Remus, I’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I don’t think I can.’
‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Lupin, looking disappointed.’ (DH, 173-4)
But with Ginny, he’s accidentally gone much further. He hasn’t said Horcruxes, but he’s as good as. The trio are setting off to try to kill Voldemort, the most dangerous task imaginable in this war. He tries, in vain, to undo it, but the damage is already done. Ginny knows more now than she did before: that the journey he’s about to go on is one that very likely will claim his life.
What does Ginny know about Harry’s fate before this moment?
It's clear from this interaction that Harry has never discussed any of this with Ginny before. In their breakup scene, Harry repeatedly said that he was breaking up with her for her own safety. He said he did not want her to be used as bait, as she already had been previously, and as Sirius was: 'Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up...' (HBP, 602). The focus was entirely on the risk to Ginny's life, a risk Harry says he cannot live with.
Ginny’s remarks at Dumbledore’s funeral told us something about how she, at that point, understood the path ahead for Harry. She made her half-joke that Harry was always busy saving the Wizarding World, and says she thinks he 'would never be happy', never fulfilled or satisfied, unless he were 'hunting Voldemort' (HBP, 603). She showed she interpreted his actions as choices being made by someone brave, determined, and personally committed to bringing about the end of Voldemort, not someone destined to. Harry’s motivations and reasons are ones she respects and empathises with. She knows the path ahead is dangerous. She doesn’t yet think of it as lethal.
Harry didn’t respond to her assessments at the funeral, neither correcting nor confirming them. He didn’t let her know, at that stage, exactly what it is he is going to set off to do. The closest Harry came to revealing the road ahead for him in the break-up scene was this:
'It’s been like… like something out of someone else’s life, these last few weeks with you,' said Harry. 'But I can’t… we can’t… I’ve got things to do alone now.'
She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’ (HBP, 602)
This is a pattern throughout their relationship, both as friends and later as romantic partners. Ginny knows a little, but not a lot, about Harry’s path. She thinks of it almost entirely as a decision he has made himself. Conversations about Harry’s destiny - about the Prophecy, about being the Chosen One, and, eventually, about the Horcrux hunt - happen near Ginny, but never with her. She does not seem to believe that Harry is the Chosen One or in any way bound to Voldemort's own fate. At the start of HBP, on the train in Slughorn’s carriage, Ginny states publicly her belief that any speculation about Harry being the Chosen One is nonsense:
‘We never heard a prophecy,” said Neville, turning geranium pink as he said it.
‘That’s right,’ said Ginny staunchly. ‘Neville and I were both there too, and all this ‘Chosen One’ rubbish is just the Prophet making things up as usual.’ (HBP, 140)
Ultimately, before DH, Ginny has been given very little information. We can assume that she’s decided to respect Harry’s decision to keep any information from her and not to push for it. She has reason to fear he might be in danger, but she doesn’t yet know the full extent of it.
Ginny’s response
The immediate aftermath of Harry’s confession at the Burrow is very telling.
‘They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since their stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was sure she was remembering them too.’ - DH (79)
It’s important that, immediately after this confession, Harry’s mind immediately takes him to private time spent alone with Ginny at the end of HBP. His certainty that Ginny, too, is reminiscing about them is typical of their wordless displays of understanding. They both reach for memories. And the memories of the last time he was alone with her, when they were still together, suddenly trigger an intense emotional and sexual tension. They are soon interrupted, and the dinner afterwards is extremely awkward. Harry wishes he were further away from Ginny, and tries, with great difficulty, to avoid touching her at the dinner table. The energy between them is intense and charged, anticipatory and frustrated. There are lots of ‘unsaid things’ that have just passed between them, and both are aware of it (DH, 79).
There are important themes being introduced here. Whenever Harry thinks about memories of his time with Ginny in DH, he does so consistently in two clear ways. To him, those times were private, intensely intimate moments which carried huge personal significance. It is strongly implied those were moments of sexual intimacy between the two of them, and where they shared an emotional closeness neither has found with any other character. But those moments with Ginny are also something Harry feels he was wrong to take. His relationship with her was something that, in retrospect, he embarked upon against his better judgement. He now feels it was something he was not entitled to, on account of his own burdens and obligations. Those were ‘stolen hours’ that were ‘something out of someone else’s life’. If we look to the wedding scene, we can see this most clearly:
‘‘Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely,’ said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. ‘But I must say, Ginevra’s dress is far too low cut.’
Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the marquee, back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago; they had always seemed too good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead…’ (DH, 121)
There are certain tropes at play here, that will that recur again and again in Harry’s thoughts of Ginny until the point of his death: the memory of time alone, the feeling of shared emotional and physical intimacy, to an intense degree; the sense of their time together being something stolen, both in the sense of it being snatched from within darker times, but also being forbidden, given with Harry’s fate when it comes to Voldemort. That Harry recalls these moments at a moment as two other characters make lifelong vows of marriage to each other is not insignificant: all is set up to maximise the sense of tragedy.
Ginny processing Harry’s fate
Ginny is not naive. Harry’s confession seems to change something about how she thinks about what he’s about to do. She may once have dismissed the prophecy of Harry as the Chosen One as nonsense. But she now has reason to suspect that might not quite be true.
She may well re-trace what she does know. After all, she was at the Department of Mysteries two summers prior, where she learnt that Voldemort, at least, thinks there is a prophecy of significance that involves Harry directly. She knows Harry has been having one-on-one lessons with Dumbledore: she even gave him one of the invitations (HBP, 228). She also knows that Harry and Dumbledore left school for a secret mission alone on the night the Astronomy Tower was attacked and Dumbledore was killed. She observed how Harry saw Dumbledore’s death as a catalyst to prepare for a path that required him to step back from her. Above all, we also know that Ginny is a character who understands Tom Riddle intimately. She is one of the people who comes closest to understanding the stakes of your life being bound, in some way, to Voldemort.
It is also significant that Ginny is a character canonically intrigued, and touched, by death, and by powerful Dark magic. The diary, and her own near-death experience, is the most obvious example. But in the Department of Mysteries during OotP, we are told she is also one of the characters most drawn to the veil, despite having far less direct experience of loss and grief than Harry, Luna, or even Neville:
‘[Harry] took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to — well, come on, then!’ said Hermione, and she led the way back around the dais. On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too. Without speaking, Hermione took hold of Ginny’s arm, Ron Neville’s, and they marched them firmly back to the lowest stone bench and clambered all the way back up to the door.’ (OotP, 775)
I don’t mean to suggest Ginny knew what was coming for Harry, that she foresaw him having to go to his death. She knows nothing of Horcruxes, she doesn’t know the contents of the Prophecy, and she certainly doesn’t know Harry himself is a Horcrux. Harry, of course, doesn’t yet know the certainty of him going to his own death, at this point in the text. But given the information she alone has been handed, inadvertently, by Harry, she has plenty of reason to begin to suspect the path Harry is on is one that might end in death, moreso for him than for an anyone else in this war.
Ginny doesn’t appear much in the following pages, other than in her role helping to prepare the house for the wedding. Over the next few days, she has lots of time to consider Harry’s words. We know she’s also sharing a bedroom with Hermione, who is actively preparing for their imminent departure, and watching the three of them try to sneak off together to make plans. This is time for Ginny to start to digest the information Harry has unwittingly divulged. She can now begin to think about how she ought to respond to the prospect of him leaving for a mission that will, likely, cost him his life.
The kiss itself
We can see Ginny has planned this interaction with Harry in her bedroom. The false casualness of how the scene opens - ‘Harry, can you come in here a moment?’ - and the actions of the bedroom’s other occupant, Hermione, suggests some level of premeditation and collaboration. For the first time, Ginny brings him into her bedroom, with the door closed. The setting is obviously intimate and suggestive.
Harry describes Ginny as seeming nervous, but purposeful, like she is readying herself for something - she ‘[takes] a deep breath’. She is looking at him ‘steadily’. Harry is nervous, too: he cannot bring himself to look at her, finding it almost painful, like ‘gazing into a brilliant light’ (DH, 98). Her trademark blazing look is in full force. She doesn’t entertain his attempts at small talk: she is serious about what she’s about to do.
‘‘I couldn’t think what to get you,’ she said.
‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’
She disregarded this too.’ (DH, 98-9)
Ginny opens by revealing how difficult it has been for her to work out what she could give him, under the circumstances. She is, in her own way, acknowledging how hard she is finding processing what it is he has to do now. She has been struggling with the prospect of Harry’s departure, and the possibility, even the likelihood, of his death. But she has decided she wants to make that path easier for him. Despite his reassurance, she insists she wanted to give him something.
‘‘I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.”
He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful...' (99)
These lines are so significant. The first two lines in particular are deeply profound. They read very differently to how I first thought of them, if seen in this light. I didn’t know what would be useful, she says, because she doesn't know what she can say that will be useful. What could possibly make this easier, to help Harry think about the enormity of his situation, or to help guide him on a path requiring him to accept his own likely death?
She doesn’t want what she gives to him now to be too heavy, too sad, or too serious, because she knows Harry will not be able to deal with it (‘nothing too big’). Anything too declaratory, too sentimental, or too enormous, would be impossible for him to leave with. In the last part of the sentence, her words are deliberately vague: because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.
I think this is the most poignant part, and it suggests the part of Ginny's mind that believes in, and is curious about, what happens beyond, after death: the voices on the other side of the veil. I think there is some part of her that thinks Harry might be going somewhere she can’t reach him - what Dumbledore will later call going on. Ginny does not openly speculate about where Harry will be taking whatever she gives him. That it could be to his own grave, or beyond, is left unspoken. He looks at her, finally, after these words, because he seems to understand, on some level, what she is trying to say to him.
‘She took a step closer to him. ‘So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.’’ (DH, 99)
Ginny has decided: the thing she will give him is a memory, one that he can take with him when they part. Something to remember me by. She wants the memory of her, of them, to be useful, to serve him in some way, and to be something that he might be able to take on with him after death. She tries to soften what she’s trying to convey, with the joke about the veela. But both seem to understand what she is really saying: that she isn’t really asking for his loyalty or fidelity. She doesn’t say she’s giving him ‘something to remember me by’ for when he comes back and they can be together again. Her words are very final. The joke is supposed to make it easier for him to hear what she is saying: she’s telling him, quietly, how to think about her when he leaves, whatever leaving might mean.
Harry, for his part, continues the joke. (‘I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.’) She plays along, sort of, in a very sad way (‘there’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for’). But both seem to know that there is no real silver lining to this.
And then there’s the kiss itself:
‘There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,’ she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than Firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair —’ (DH, 99)
It all comes to a head here: ‘blissful oblivion’, this moment of extraordinary intensity, where she kisses him and allows him, for a moment, to think only about her and them together. It’s heady and sexual (‘the feel of her’). It’s a gift for Harry to be able to forget everything and let this moment be a vacuum, to focus only on her. The crescendo effect of the short causes and run-on sentences allows the moment to build and build, a crescendo effect that anticipates something to come.
Of course, their moment gets interrupted, again. Unlike when Ron interrupted her with Dean, Ginny doesn't rage at him this time: she is subdued, a response that is far more appropriate for her processing the fact that she may have just had her final kiss with the boy she loves.
When Harry and Ron are discussing the kiss outside on the lawn, after the initial shock of being yelled at by Ron for going anywhere near Ginny, Harry has his own, shattering realisation of what all of this means for himself and Ginny:
‘Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again—’
‘She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, she’s not expecting us to— to end up married, or—’
As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless, and unpleasant stranger. In one spiralling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his . . . he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.’ (DH, 100)
Thinking aloud, Harry says it would be idiotic for he or Ginny to imagine they could be together, either now, or at any point in the future. He expects her to find someone else; he cannot even begin to imagine a future for himself after the task set out for him. He does not say his inevitable death - he has not yet embraced that reality - but he remains caught in the certainty of an existential battle with Voldemort that he knows he may well not survive.
Later that day, Harry will receive the snitch from Dumbledore’s will. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he now holds the resurrection stone, the item that will open at the close in the forest. It is a birthday that starts and ends with hints about what little time he has left: the stage is set for an arc that, now, has to end in his own death.
Foreshadowing Ginny and the Forest
Moments foreshadowing the significance of the forest are all over Deathly Hallows. Sometimes, they mirror the moment of his own death; often, they are related to Ginny. When they leave the Ministry, with Ron splinched, clutching the Horcrux locket, they arrive in a forest. For a moment Harry’s heart ‘leaped’ at the thought that they were back in Hogwarts’ grounds, the site of so much of his earlier happiness with Ginny (DH, 221). When the trio hear that Ginny, Neville and Luna tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor, it is the Forbidden Forest they are sent to by Snape as punishment (248-9). Harry does not fear the Forest, and is consoled by the thought of Ginny serving detention there rather than anywhere else.
In the Forest of Dean, the scene where Ron returns begins with Harry thinking of Ginny. He sits at the mouth of the tent, wanting to look for Ginny on the Marauders’ Map, until he remembers it’s Christmastime and she is at the Burrow (297). Later, in a moment that mirrors his later walk to his death, he follows his mother - Snape’s patronus, the doe - into the woods, in order to recover and destroy the Horcrux, inching Harry’s own life closer to its close:
Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, [the doe’s] burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety. “Lumos!” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited. The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs…
He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?’ (DH, 299)
Foreshadowing Harry's end in the Forest means also foreshadowing Ginny's own appearance at the moment of his death.
Harry’s ‘death’ in the Forest
In the final battle, Ginny is the last person Harry sees before he begins his walk into the Forest. He takes the words she says to the child on the ground as her final act of comfort. Harry hears them as if they are being spoken to him:
‘He was feet away from her when he realised it was Ginny.
He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.
‘It’s all right,’ Ginny was saying. ‘It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside.’
‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore!’
‘I know,’ said Ginny, and her voice broke. ‘It’s going to be all right.’
Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home (...)
Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.’ (DH, 558-9)
Harry believes that this is his final moment with Ginny before he goes to die. A part of him wants her to know that it’s happening: he is leaving, at last. But he can't call to her, because he worries she will try and stop him, and he might let her. Instead, he walks on, and doesn’t look back. After watching Ginny comfort the girl crying for her mother, Harry then goes on to the Forest, and summons his own mother, his own family, to walk with him to his death.
‘His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort. . . .' (DH, 561-2)
Harry is already preparing to go on from this world: his living loved ones are the ones he now feels furthest from. He stands now with the dead he has summoned, who recognise him and seem to have memories of him. He doesn't fear the dead: he is going to join them.
It’s the death scene itself that I think has subtle, but important parallels with the kiss scene much earlier. In both imagery and in writing style, the scene recalls that earlier moment, where Harry found himself on the edge of another kind of oblivion. There is this mounting, febrile sense of anticipation. There is a tension that is almost sexual, a dynamic injected into the scene through descriptions of Bellatrix’s body language and behaviour towards Voldemort:
‘Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.’ (DH, 564)
The ugly parallel of Bellatrix and Voldemort is not supposed to show the pair as the mirror image of Harry and Ginny. Rather, it is a theme that recurs throughout the series to demonstrate the gulf between Harry, with his immense capacity for love, and Voldemort, with none. Bellatrix and Ginny are memorably paralleled twice in the series: once, at the Department of Mysteries, where Bellatrix moves to ‘torture the little girl’, and Harry steps in to prevent her (OotP, 783), and again in the final battle:
'Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch—
He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways…’ (DH, 589)
As Harry waits for the killing curse, we see the most direct parallel with Ginny's final kiss to him:
‘None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his — ’ (DH, 564)
There's such an intense physicality and breathlessness to the whole scene, and an enduring pseudo-sexual tension, with Bellatrix audibly panting. Even the sentence structure even invokes the kissing scene: the run-on build up of clauses, the repetition of the present participle to actively hold the reader in one present moment, building and building and ending on a dash, the promise of something more.
At the end of his life, Harry returns to the memory Ginny gave him. She meant for it to be useful, if he was to go to his death. And at the close of his life he chooses to use it, as he prepares to leave her behind in this world and depart for the next. He feels the memory of her, the sensation of physical touch and of being kissed, the look she gives him that he knows as one of love and great courage. As he is killed, he remembers her last gift to him, the certainty of her love for him impressed upon him.
--
There's a line in OotP that I think is such an underrated line that sums up who Ginny is as a character. Harry is trying to get to Umbridge's fire to speak to Sirius when he thinks the latter is being tortured at the Ministry; Hermione suggests using Ginny and Luna as a distraction, despite Harry's objections:
'Though clearly struggling to understand what was going on, Ginny said immediately, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,'... (OotP, 736)
This is who Ginny is. It's especially who she is to Harry, during the war. She doesn't fully know what's actually being asked of Harry (and, by extension, what is being asked of her, as the person who loves him, and who has most to lose if he is to die). But even when kept in the dark, she is enormously selfless, and her biggest act of bravery is extremely quiet. She keeps the secret Harry accidentally bestows on her, and she realises, in some sense, before he does, what it will likely mean for his life. She chooses to let him go on, knowing that he is loved, to make the path that he is on a little bit easier, even when has realised that it will take him away from her for good.
Thanks so much @somesunlitdays for the tag :)
It's taken me long enough to get to it, but I always enjoy these things.
Rules: Tag anyone you want to know better.
Three ships: Harry/Ginny, James/Lily, George/Angelina
First ever ship: Angel/Buffy... I'm confessing my age here, but I used to tape every episode of that show *cough* on VHS *cough* and saved them all to watch later. A streaming service back then would have saved me a whole lot of fucking time, money and storage space.
Last song: Young God, by Halsey
Last Film: 101 Dalmations (the one with the talking dogs, apparently we can't watch the one with the non-talking dogs in this house)
Currently reading: I'm just about to start reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Currently watching: Brooklyn 99
Currently consuming: Just finished a tea and a choccy bikkie :)
Thank you @seriouslysam8 for tagging me! took me a while to sit down to do it haha
Rules: Tag anyone you want to know better.
Three ships: Harry/Ginny (Harry Potter), Ron/Hermione (Harry Potter), Nathan/Haley (One Tree Hill)...also Mouth/Millie (One Tree Hill)
First ever ship: Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens (cringing right now)
Last song: Soldier by Gavin DeGraw (also an honorable mention to Dear Alcohol by Dax, and Paint me a Birmingham by Tracy Lawrence)
Last film: My all-time favorite comfort rom-com: Sweet Home Alabama with my second place celebrity crush (Josh Lucas--he takes a second place seat next to Matthew McConaughey whom I fell in love with at the age of 10 after the Ghosts of Girlfriend Past movie premiered--don’t judge me)
Currently reading: rereading 1984 by George Orwell, and rereading Entombed by @seriouslysam8 (as i tend to do monthly)
Currently watching: One Tree Hill (for the hundredth time because I love it some much) while tuning in to the Drama Queens Podcast since they are the 3 main actresses from the show and are rewatching/discussing it episode by episode
Currently consuming: Egg Salad and Dr. Pepper (Grad school, amiright?) I know it’s gross but I have nothing else for dinner
Currently craving: to get this damn master’s thesis done tbh (and to bake some peanut butter and jelly cupcakes)
Tagging: I’m not on here enough to have a buddy to tag, so I’m tagging YOU!
This has been something that has bothered me for YEARS, and I haven’t seen anything on Google or Tumblr so I’m not sure if I’m the one to point this out or not.
In the last movie, when Harry is dueling Voldemort for the last time, there is a person standing in the entrance of Hogwarts watching them. Is it someone from the film crew? Is it a character? Hagrid? Neville? Hermione? Ron? Ginny?
Any theories? Rewatch the scene on YouTube if you can’t see the person I’ve circled. But there is 100% a person watching.
